Debbie Tucker Green’s remarkable one-woman play creates a moving insight into the immediate effect and lasting impact grief causes by sudden loss, casting an eye on the rise in knife crime and giving a voice to those it hits the hardest.
The show opens on a stage set with dozens upon dozens of stacked chairs resting on metal bars, upturned and uneasy – immediately creating a sense of unbalance and precariousness within the audience. Set designer Max Johns brings empty space and chaotic background into perfect harmony to create a space that balances on the edge of disarray and lends itself perfectly to the production. Lighting also plays an important part in this piece; lighting designer Chloe Kenward uses varying colours and depths of light and shadow to aid transitions between characters and moments in a subtle yet significant way.
The only performer, Kiza Dean, uses a remarkable talent to portray Sister/Brother/Mum/Dad; bringing each character to life with perfect embodiment and voice, it’s easy to forget that you’re only watching one actor. ‘Random’ begins at 7:37am on no particular day, as we see the family’s regular morning routines – a sister arguing with a brother, a mother insisting her children are well dressed and well fed before they go about their day, and a father who doesn’t say much unless he has to. Dean’s incredible performance allows her audience to develop a relationship with each of these characters; sharing with us their personalities and innermost feelings as we laugh and sigh right along with her. We watch them go about their days – Brother showing up late for school, Mother shopping for groceries in her neighbourhood, Sister trying to avoid drama at work and keeping to herself, wondering why her man hasn’t called…and receiving a text from her Mother instructing her to ‘Come home. Now.’
It is at this moment that the light-hearted, everyday feel of the production takes a turn and we are shown just how easily a seemingly normal day in the life of a family can be thrown into turmoil, when Brother is fatally stabbed. Dean provides a beautiful and immensely moving multi-faceted portrayal of grief; from a mother in denial angrily demanding answers, a father stoic in the face of crisis, a sister breathing in the musk of her brother’s bedroom where they’d argued just hours before. It is Dean’s careful and calculated reactions that make this piece all the more heart wrenching – the realistic portrayal of grief is what made her performance so poignant. Tears, sighs and the despair of a family suffering its greatest lost, all captured so perfectly that there wasn’t a dry eye in the room – myself included.
It is when performers show themselves at their most raw and vulnerable that they create their most emotive work, and many a family that have suffered this pain have found a voice here in this wonderfully written and perfectly staged work of theatre.
Reviewer – Hazel Kaye
on - 6/2/19
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