At Volcano Theatre |
| Volcano Theatre- This Imaginary Woman , Chapter Arts Centre , March 13, 2003 |
| The stage is a cloud set for a dream. The musician, in black, walks down to the front and speaks to the audience. This is going to be no ball of laughs, he tells us but he uses less insensitive words. He is clearly more at home with his guitar, which he certainly plays most handsomely if not, at times, a little too loudly. On the movingly designed publicity hand-out Diario de Mallorca, a name not known to me, writes of Fern Smith; “ She is devastating, and even that is to say too little”. Fern’s performance here tonight only indicates that she might well grow to embrace this accolade. Certainly she is very brave in taking such a close, personal and moving experience as the death of her own mother as the starting point for this poetic work. In words and song with crashing accompaniment from Patrick Fitzgerald she describes her frustration with the progress of the illness, a long drawn out period of Multiple Sclerosis, (“I grieved for her before she died”) her anger and her grief. Her singing is brash and torchy but she need to find a sharper edge to the voice to really penetrate our bodies with her emotion. Only with the final unsung song at the close of this very human prayer did I find the actress’s strong emotion coming through to me. Many people carry a strong and moving death experience inside them. Although she clearly tells us the action arises out of her experience of her mother’s death, we have the artist, one step back, setting out these emotions in front of us, not living them. The introduction of “This Imaginary Woman” and her diary gives us some additional colour and background but again I felt should have moved us more. The actor and musician work well and smoothly together. A satisfying if still embryonic collaboration but a more integrated balance needs to be sought between instruments and voice. It was clear that the character we were seeing on stage had very strong emotional reactions to the circumstances within her story I just felt the actress did not demonstrate them as strongly as they were felt or as strongly as I wanted to feel them. Anger and emotion are shown through our eyes. The lighting here deliberately prevented us from seeing the performer’s expression clearly. This would of course underline the ‘one step back’ approach if that was the intention. Maybe her feelings were just too real for her to share them so completely with us? Let yourself go girl. We’re all on your side! Certainly a demanding and atheistic evening, a tough challenge given a tough and very absorbing response by this extremely able performer. Volcano Theatre’s ‘drive for honesty and passion being at the core of the company’s work ‘ is moved further forward by this very interesting performance. |
Reviewed by: Michael Kelligan |
This review has been read 2629 times There are 31 other reviews of productions with this title in our database:
|
