Low Down

A 39 year old woman discovers a long buried memory of abuse , and is visited by her recently dead mother who wants to help her overcome her inability to form relationships with men.

 

Review

Reduced Circumstances deserve to be  heartily praised, or better still, discovered, for this piece.  There is not a weak link.  The acting is uniformally excellent, the staging simple but highly effective, Laurence Horstman’s live music is subtle, beautiful and appropriate, the use of video is restrained and integrated well and Jackie Kane’s script and direction is witty, harrowing, humane and redemptive; she has achieved a little gem. 

Even the smaller roles played by Lauren Aubrey are made to count.   It would deserve a fifth star were it not for occasional lapses into therapy speak and a slight clunkiness surrounding the magic reality  elements, when recently deceased mother Rita (Emma Keele)  returns to  her artist daughter Elaine, played with dazzling fragility and nuanced emotional authenticity by Suzanne McKenzie.

This play charts the appalling long and short term ramifications of childhood sexual abuse, both on the victim, the family and the abuser; but it refuses  to create a cardboard monster out of the abuser, Joe (Tom Sawyer)  managing to induce a degree of pity and understanding in the audience for his life destroying act.  Keele’s despairing dance of fury and sorrow upon discovering her lover’s horrific betrayal is one of the most unique, moving moments I have witnessed in the theatre. 

The fact that it works at all, yet alone so seamlessly, is astonishing.    The action swaps between the present day and the late sixties to explain how some actions can echo down the years and even beyond the grave, and also to show how hope and healing can arrive in the most isolated and apparently hopeless of lives, in the form of Andy Dowbiggin’s quietly persistant would-be boyfriend.   This feels like a piece written from the heart,  and it will break, and warm, yours.  
 

Reviewed by DM 5th August 2008

Website :

http://www.reducedcircumstances.co.uk