Old Fitz Theatre, March 9
8/10
What curious creatures we theatre-goers are, accepting being emotionally scarred, in this case by a lone actor. And what a fine line it is along which a drama for one actor dances, requiring an inbuilt theatricality so it needs to be seen rather than read, sometimes using the audience as a putative interlocutor. Above all, it needs an actor who makes it live.
This New Ghosts production of Gary Owen’s 2015 play, directed by Lucy Clements and starring Meg Clarke, first aired in 2020, and it must be gold for an actor and director to revisit a piece and shine fresh light upon it. Not having seen the first incarnation, I can’t say how far it’s come, but the fact that Clarke has since spent time in Wales must be a boon for a play set in Cardiff’s Splott district. The “Iphigenia” in Owen’s title, of course, comes from the Greek myth of the woman prepared to sacrifice herself for the common good.
Iphigenia is now plain Effie, a young woman whose way of coping is to drink herself into such a void that it takes her three days to crawl out. That passes the time, you see, and any alternative is even more frightening. Effie immediately shirtfronts us and drags us deep into her nihilism, where we laugh at her sharp insights into how those around her are even more shambolic. There’s Kev – nominally her boyfriend, but really just her accomplice in mundane sex – whose thickness bewilders her. And us. No wonder she falls for a soldier in a pub. No wonder that sex now seems a better way of passing the time than a hangover.
She also has the heart to accept that he’s lost half a leg and half his friends, thanks to an improvised explosive device. “We are these little soft creatures, and it’s so easy to hurt us,” she tells him. We know she’s talking about herself, too.
Owen’s play is ingeniously plotted, and when we reach what seems to be a slowing denouement, there’s a yet greater emotional peak to scale, even as Clarke looks us in the eyes like it’s our fault. She rises to all the challenges Owen sets her with only tiny chinks in her performance, all the while massaged by Clements astute direction. Designer Angela Doherty gives them some steps and pavement, green with slime, on which to work, and lighting designer Luna Ng fashions pools that variously designate bar, bedroom or hospital.
But our eyes have nowhere to go other than Clarke, and she acts with her bones, sinews and muscles as much as her eyes and voice. It’s a brave and committed performance that rises with the play’s muddy, littered tide, without becoming mawkish.
The flaw is Owen’s treating us a bit like Effie does Kev, when, to end, he spells out his themes of selflessness, resilience and equality. His play had done that.
Until March 22.