Warning: This review contains plot-spoilers.
B-Arts, a short walk from Stoke-on-Trent railway station, is the first theatre venue I’ve visited which shares its premises with a bakery. The welcome is warm but the performance space, a repurposed industrial building, is a bit on the chilly side. Hint: if you’re offered a blanket, take it!
The lights come up on Faye Atkinson Rowse’s attractive and versatile set and we are transported by the magic of theatre to a hot summer day some years ago where, in a city park, Liz (Maisie Greenwood) and John (Ben Shaw) meet for the first time. John is running around the park in preparation for joining the Army; Liz, who is training to become a therapist, offers him her bottle of water. As they chat, John explains his motivation for joining up: he wants to protect people. So does Liz, who points out to a disbelieving John that it’s “harder to protect the mind than the body”. She aspires to buy a house on the desirable Mill Lane.
It's in the same park that we meet another couple, Rachel (Saime Higson) and Michael (Jim Kelly), and share their joy as Rachel announces she is expecting their first child. This too is a flashback and as writer / director BJ Edwards’ tale unfolds we learn that these two couples’ fates are to become tragically interwoven in the coming years.
Some three years later, John has returned from Afghanistan where he lost his comrades in an ambush. He is suffering from survivor’s guilt, having been thrown clear by the blast, to the extent that his mental health is destroyed. In a painfully moving soliloquy he tells us now he “inhabits the park like a ghost” and we see how in his mind he keeps Liz – from whom he is by now estranged – in a golden cage under the park bench. John ultimately lets himself into Liz’s home where, as heartbreakingly too many do, he takes the only way out of his torment that he can see.
Some time later, Rachel and Michael are visited by tragedy: the death of their beloved son Danny in a road accident. Rachel is in therapy with Liz as she seeks to cope not only with this but also the fact that Michael is having an affair. As we learn more about Rachel and Michael’s relationship Higson brings her character to life, taking her through the arc from a rather needy soul who can’t bear the thought of her unfaithful husband leaving to an empowered one who ultimately orders him out after joining all the dots and uncovering the true nature of what he has done to her, and his illicit lover’s identity. He ends up alone in the park where we first met him.
There is a lot here, packed tightly in to just under 90 minutes. Whilst we get into the minds of John and Rachel, I can’t help feeling that the characters of Liz and Michael could perhaps have been developed further. How did Liz fail to help John in his anguish? She briefly alludes to having been “too close” but that doesn’t tell the story of how someone who could have been rescued fell through the net. And how could Michael live for so long with his terrible secret?
Don’t let that detract from a powerful piece of theatre which handles some traumatic topics in a sensitive and mature way though. The issue of homelessness and mental ill-health among former Service personnel in particular is one which needs to be brought into greater public awareness. Maybe the difference between John’s tragedy and Rachel’s survival is simply that Rachel had someone to talk to.
50/50 Theatre is run by BJ Edwards, who is totally blind, and Faye Atkinson Rowse; it produces work which is accessible to visually-impaired performers (who make up half of the cast) and audiences alike. In the Q&A afterwards, we learn that none of the cast had worked together before “Fragile” and that they only had eight rehearsals. The production was funded by both the Arts Council and the National Lottery – securing this funding is quite an achievement in itself – and I would hope that further support can be found in future to take “Fragile” on tour. It deserves a wider audience.
Reviewer - Ian Simpson
on - 13/3/20
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