One Step Back is a new London-based physical theatre company set up to explore socio-political themes. “Sister!”, its first production, is an interesting and well-executed piece, though a bit puzzling in places. This evening’s performance was in the Vaults of the Kings Arms, as part of the Greater Manchester Fringe Festival.
Aisha Weise-Forbes, in a nurse’s blue tunic and dark trousers, was the steadfast centre of the piece. Occasionally delivering dialogue, but primarily telling her story via movement, she was a calm, warm presence, utilising the many repetitive movements of a hospital nurse in her choreography. A soundscape of low-key original music by Lewis Thomas accompanied her performance, interspersed with a variety of recorded voices taken from what sounded like television interviews that spanned a seventy-year period.
Her character, Jade, began by making her spoken professional vows as a nurse, and was filled with optimism and joy for the future. Plainly this was her true vocation. The voice recordings began to celebrate the birth of the NHS, in a similarly optimistic and joyous way. A lot of the busy activity of a nurse came into the movement, and there was a recurring theme of babies and wanting to protect them. Then the voice recordings began to change in tone. Nurses were now arriving from the Caribbean, similar in appearance to Jade, and the outright racism with which they were treated by patients was very bluntly spoken, apparently by past patients themselves. Jade retreated up to the back of the space, with even her sunny nature affected. Institutional racism was also referred to, and then the themes of babies started coming back in: – I’m guessing this was a reference to how Caribbean nurses, unable to get promoted or taken seriously otherwise, started moving over into being midwives instead.
And this alone would have been an interesting, solid one-woman show, performed with quiet grace by Weise-Forbes. Where it got puzzling was what the other performer, Milli Jarlett, was portraying. Playing a character called Gilly, Jarlett was in a long skirt and a shawl, and regularly dropped dead leaves around the stage. Plainly she was in a different sort of world to Jade, but it was never established what that world was, and there were no clues from the soundscape either.
Jarlett is a good dancer, and used a very frenetic sort of dance energy, agitated, and filled with anxiety. At times, she appeared to be choking. The recurring theme of the babies who needed protection was used by her too, and she often seemed to be needing protection herself – though from what, it was never made clear. She and Weise-Forbes took turns doing solos on the stage, seemingly oblivious to each other, and it gave the effect of two one-woman shows occurring at the same time. A few times they dueted, and then they were tightly synchronised with each other, mirroring each other’s movements, even entwining arms and falling back, suggesting an unspoken interdependence. The rest of the time, I was simply bemused at what Gilly was and why she was there.
According to the production notes for “Sister!”, the piece “explores the female condition to heal and care and why these roles are traditionally persecuted in society.” That came through really clearly with Jade’s character, probably because we the audience are closer to it in our own experience. Artistically, we need a bit more help to have the same level of impact with Gilly.
Reviewer - Thalia Terpsichore
on - 27/7/19
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