The performance space upstairs at the Kings is surrounded by a circle of chairs for the audience with some single seats, regularly spaced, reserved for the actors to discreetly sit on when they enter with the lights still up.
The intention is for us all to feel part of the same support group as the actors, speaking words taken from verbatim transcripts of conversations with survivors of domestic abuse, open up to us and tell their stories. To add to the effect, they often get direct eye contact with members of the audience as they take it in turns to tell their stories in sections, and sometimes also when they are reacting to others' stories, as though they are hearing them for the first time and are as shocked as we are. This largely works, although each of their speeches just continues from their last one rather than sounding like part of a group conversation.
The production was created in association with Bolton-based Fortalice, "a charity that works with all victims and survivors of domestic abuse", and its Chief Executive, Gill Smallwood MBE, whose staff are on hand at every performance to support anyone affected by the issues addressed in the play.
Each of the five actors—Vicky Binns, Bel Odawa, Isabel Ford, Flo Wilson and Eve Steele—has an awful but compelling story to tell of a partner who was either violent towards them or abused them emotionally by controlling what they were allowed to do, where they were allowed to go and whom they were allowed to see, typically for several years. All at some point kick themselves for allowing it to go on for so long, but of course they all know just how difficult and hopeless it can seem while caught in the middle of an abusive relationship.
But these are the lucky ones in the sense that they all, by the interval, have made the break, most with the help of Fortalice (Binns's character only turns to them in act II). But the happy ending isn't necessarily a 'happy ever after', and there are more challenges to come in the second half, with ex-partners threatening them or their families and breaking non-molestation orders, but there are stories of getting set up with nice housing, going into further and higher education or just getting the chance to be a mother or grandmother in a calmer, more 'normal' environment. However, while it makes sense to put the interval where it is if there is to be one, there is less to say in the second half compared to the first, and so it feels a bit stretched.
The performances are convincing enough that someone asked me in the interval whether they were telling their own stories or acting roles. Their attitudes are very different, ranging from Steele's character who feels guilty for getting the help that she feels someone else might need more—although her life has been transformed completely since she was helped by Fortalice, completely justifying her place—to Binns's emotionally wrought tale of violence and threats against her, her children and her parents, in yet another terrific performance from her.
Like the John Godber Company's One Punch, which recently visited Manchester, this is theatre with a purpose and should be judged for that at least as much as for its theatrical qualities. However, creator and director David Thacker knows how to put a theatre production together effectively, and he has turned these stories into something that, at least in the first half, holds an audience in horror and suspense, made more compelling by the awful knowledge that these stories are word-for-word true.