Well, you certainly have to put in some work with this play by Nathanial Martello-White. It’s a bit of a jigsaw puzzle. My brain was hurting trying to work out who was who, the time and sequence of scenes and what was and wasn’t true. It wasn’t completely rewarding, though I admired it’s cleverness and all of the performances.
When you enter the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs you seem to be in some sort of public hall. There’s a circle of those dreadful grey plastic chairs and we surround them sitting on similar ones. At first it seems like a family therapy session, with the focus on Angel, who may or may not have been abused. Eventually we work out that the others are her mother and stepfather, her brother, her mum’s three sisters, one a twin, with her son, Angel’s cousin. Angel’s biological dad comes in later. It moves back and forth in time and we learn the views of the various family members on the alleged abuse, together with much family history and some actual history. Doubts emerge about the truthfulness of Angel’s claims. Sometimes characters are talking about others not there, though they are looking on and acknowledged with eye contact.
It instantly grabbed my attention and held me throughout, partly because I was working hard on the jigsaw and partly because of the compelling performances, particularly from Adelle Leonce as Angel. It’s miraculous that the actors don’t lose their way given the staccato nature of the dialogue, sometimes overlapping. It wasn’t entirely conclusive and I didn’t engage with it emotionally much of the time, probably because my brain was working too hard for my heart to click in, which is why it wasn’t entirely satisfying. Still, it’s an original piece, clever, intellectually engaging and beautifully performed, and I would recommend seeing it.
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