Love is blind, never more so than for those whose foundational impressions of it are forged from a young age by the likes of the Disney Company and its formulaic sweetly happy-ever-after perfection.
Add in human nature and media conditioning that a person is not whole until they are part of a couple, and the pressure to find a soulmate builds to unrealistic proportions.
In There is a Light and a Whistle for Attracting Attention, we follow, largely in flashback, the trajectory of one woman's story. The bittersweet title, suggestive of a crisis landing, is elegant shorthand for its protagonist: a person adrift, calling to be seen, needing recovery.
Directed by Sophia Capasso, the action unfolds fluidly, the woman's restless movement choreographed around some boxes and a chest of drawers, the units of which form a Pandora's box of the unnamed woman's life. The boundaries of her small world are further delineated by the small rectangle of grass in Shahaf Beer's understated set, which reflects the agrarian setting and alludes to a sheltered upbringing and its lack of opportunity to practise at relationships when the stakes are less high.
There is an intimacy and care to Henri Merriam's text that leans towards the poetic; the ending could do with a little reshaping, but this is an engaging and sound piece of writing. Her heroine is likable, believably both feisty and unconfident, also highly relatable as she races past red flags into a marriage with Tom, a local farmer.
The flaws in their relationship come to the surface in waves in this carefully paced-out narrative. The woman's self-blame and all-too-human reluctance to bail repeats in laps, whilst Tom's emotional abuse crashes destructively, pre-meditatively targeting the woman's vulnerabilities.
There is a sad thread that runs through the moving narrative of There is a Light and a Whistle, and there are jabs rather than a punch, if you will, that come in the breath-catching flashes of connection with this person enabled by Merriam's characterisation.
Voltaire said that we are all formed of frailty and error—Merriam shows she understands this in both her thoughtful writing and her touching performance.