“Inside I am who I’ve always been, but then I look in the
mirror and...”
Celebrating ten years as a company, The Paper Birds’ current
production evolved out of two projects, one working with a group of over 55
year olds in Leeds and the other a commission from Northern Stage.
This compact but concentrated 75 minute play focuses around
two main threads, the process of ageing and the ways in which people are
compartmentalised, stereotyped and squeezed into boxes – often the wrong shape
for them – as a result of the expectations of others.
This latter concept becomes clear from the outset. The set looks
more than usually like a designer’s model-box, with various rooms and
environments awkwardly squashed and suspended within a rectangular box. We are
admitted only 5 minutes before the start, and it soon becomes clear why, as the
actors too are squashed awkwardly into the set, emerging as if from the womb as
the play begins.
On stage we see only 4 of the cast of 5 actors with the
fifth, Sarah Berger, playing her part entirely as a voice-over. She plays an
actress of 50 who has reached an age where she is considered to have the perfect
face for radio, and now plays the nurse rather than Juliet.
The remaining cast begin with Hannah Lambsdown, a teen preparing
for university, by turns sassy and insecure. Kylie Walsh also gives us a
balanced view of confidence and doubt as Thirty, leaving her job to travel the
world as a response to losing a close friend.
Tracy-Anne Liles is Forty. Of all the cast she is manipulated
the most by the world around her. The way in which she is cajoled into playing
other parts that nobody else is prepared to accept mirrors her character’s difficulties.
There is humour here in the absurdity of her own somewhat banal product that
she finds herself promoting on QVC to her acute embarrassment. In the end,
though, it is her repeated submission to being whatever those around dictate to
her that is most telling.
Whilst the very juxtaposition of all the characters is redolent
of the process of ageing, it is Illona Linthwaite in the dual roles of Sixty
and Elderly who portrays this aspect of the play most directly. Sixty is
struggling to keep all the plates spinning with the opposing demands of work,
money, arthritic hands and an elderly mother developing dementia and preparing
to move to a care home.
There is a sort of inevitability that she will also play Elderly,
the mother, but despite this the transformation is spectacular. On one
occasion Sixty stands speaking to an empty chair – her mother – and then sits
down. In this very movement, within inches of the audience, she ages 20 years
and becomes the mother. Elderly, despite her mental and physical challenges,
becomes the most free of all the women as she recalls the past and rejoices in
the memories she has left, ultimately showing us a moment of simple delight.
It is a piece with women
depicting women and this is reflected in the audience
demographic, but this is a play about people and perceptions and has something
to say to all of us, whatever our gender or age.
Watching On the One Hand I caught glimpses of my mother and
grandmother, my brother, my father and, most of all, myself – over and over
again. It is poignant, funny, heartbreaking and surreal and demanding of houses
filled with a capacity audience - of all ages and both sexes.
Following hard on the heels of Monkey Bars that played this
space a couple of weeks ago, this is the second piece to use verbatim material
in its text. The former was entirely made from the words of children, the
current simply includes passages or fragments observed, overheard or transcribed,
but in both cases it brings a realism and immediacy to the finished result. As
a pair they could hardly have been better chosen to follow one another, as they
both have a clever way of reflecting back at us some of our deepest loves,
fears, motivators and prejudices.
On the One Hand ends its run at Liverpool Playhouse Studio with
two more performances today and then, after a break, will appear at WestYorkshire Playhouse from 21st to 23rd November 2013 and at Live TheatreNewcastle from 4th to 6th December.
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