Theatre / Reviews
Review: Some Demon, The Weston Studio, Bristol Old Vic – ‘Startlingly brilliant’
Having trained at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Laura Waldren has said that bringing her debut play to Bristol Old Vic is something of a full circle moment.
Moreover, while she is somewhat scared of introducing this semi-autobiographical play to audiences, she is also tremendously excited to see what they make of it.
The Papatango Award-winning Some Demon was selected from nearly 1,500 entries to the much-prized competition, and is being staged at the Weston Studio following a run at London’s Arcola Theatre.
It follows the story of 18-year-old Sam (Hannah Saxby), and 40 something Zoe (Sirine Saba), two very distinct and vulnerable individuals who find themselves brought together in the challenging surroundings of an eating disorder unit where they are both patients.
It’s not a setting I’ve ever seen confronted in theatre before. But it is testament to the deftness and authenticity of Waldren’s writing that she manages to skewer it with such power, while lacing it with dark humour and levity throughout.
The first thing you notice is the cramped, confined setting – brilliantly designed by Anisha Fields, who has added an upper floor to the Weston Studio stage, which doubles as a clinical observation room. In a neat analogy for what is to follow, the familiar strains of Talking Heads’ Road to Nowhere skips on a well-worn CD player.
Mara (Leah Brotherhead) prepares to leave the unit
The main room where the residents eat and converse is sanitised and claustrophobic, with a grey, carpeted floor that is stained in places from the food that has been thrown from the table.
It is dominated by a childlike mural of green handprints on the back wall, all similar if not identical to one another – analogous to the cycle of endlessly returning patients, trapped in the infantilising safety of the unit.
This space is also the setting for their twice daily community meetings with their key nurses; the more overtly empathetic Mike (Joshua James) who is keen to stress that “this isn’t a prison”, and the breezy Leanne (Amy Beth Hayes), to whom Waldren has conferred many of the funniest, most tone-deaf lines.
Zoe (Sirine Saba) gives Sam (Hannah Saxby) her first cigarette
Leanne knowingly refers to herself as the ‘bad cop’ of the two, but although there are two tongue-in-cheek references to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, any echoes of Nurse Ratchet are distant ones. Rather, her pragmatic, false jollity and apparent emotional detachment is employed perhaps as a means of coping with a day-to-day working environment in which meaningful and lasting progress can be hard to achieve.
The characters we meet, all brilliantly portrayed by a universally strong ensemble, are complex and nuanced. They variously spiral up and down, consistently put upon to share ‘helpful thoughts’ and let go of ‘challenging’ ones.
Zoe is the veteran of the group, whose serial in-patient admissions mark 25 years of her eating disorder; an illness that has become so much part of her that she characterises it as “like a toxic relationship”.
Leanne (Amy Beth Hayes) leads a group workshop
By turns, they swing from outbursts of unbridled rage to extreme and dangerous levels of self-control. The stress of meal-times is uncomfortable to watch, as Nazia (Witney White) painstakingly cuts a pea in half, and Mara (Leah Brotherhead) rails that “it’s like living bloody North Korea in here”.
In its moving and often very funny portrayal of both the intensity and intimacy of this dysfunctional group, Waldren’s writing is raw and unflinching, balancing realism with empathy, trust with honesty, and hope with hopelessness.
She shows how hard it is to untangle the idea of personal responsibility when an eating disorder has taken hold; the deep complexity of ‘looking normal’ and ‘acting normal’ amidst the terrifying prospect of reconnecting with life outside.
Mara (Leah Brotherhead) and Nazia (Witney White) during a group meeting
We learn that Mike has gone into nursing following personal experience of an eating disorder, which he suggests that for those in the grip of the illness may one day diminish to “a whisper instead of a scream”.
And we are left fervently hoping that the heartbreak of Zoe’s story may yet end in redemption, as she finds, perhaps, a reason to live in the world once more.
The audience was held transfixed throughout the lengthy, two-hour 45 minute runtime. In Waldren, Papatango has unearthed a startling new writing talent. It will be fascinating to see what she goes on to produce.
Some Demon is at The Weston Studio, Bristol Old Vic from July 9-13 at 8pm, with an additional 3pm matinee show on Saturday. Tickets are available at www.bristololdvic.org.uk.
All photos: Ellie Kurtzz
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