Showing @ Whitespace Gallery, Edinburgh, Thu 13 – Sat 15 Jun
We all need somewhere to hide occasionally. When life becomes too hard, too intense, or simply too irksome, every single one of us needs our own little sanctuary. However, as many around the world know only too well, there comes a point when that place in which we sought respite becomes a prison. As Black Dingo Productions new show demonstrates, this can all happen somewhere as mundane as the home.
Directed by Kirsty Baxter, Sanctuary tells the story of Michael (Rob David) – a young man suffering intense guilt over an acrimonious break-up with former love, Janet (Cara Warwick). Having asked Janet to move in with him so that she can get away from her slightly annoying family, the story traces their relationship from its initial hope, through emotional crisis and stifling domesticity to final collapse.
Though the story is very straightforward and countless near-identical narratives have been done to death on television soaps everywhere, Sanctuary is at least an interesting production. The set consists of a bleached white stage, furniture hand-drawn onto cardboard boxes, and an incredibly uncomfortable looking bed. The characters then discuss such things as clothes they’ve bought, work, gestures of love lifted from Hollywood films and sex-tips learnt from women’s mags, foregrounding the two dimensional banality of their existence. That is until a moment of profound reality interrupts and the set comes crashing down. The boxes are then re-assembled in the most ad hoc manner in an attempt to salvage some previous normality out of the detritus. The actors are both fairly competent (though their relationship often comes across as more avuncular than amorous) and David McFarlane’s script does produce some moments of genuine tenderness. However, it too frequently errs on the side of cliché allowing it only to merit half-marks. Yet given the materials available, the staging shows a good degree of imagination and helps prevent the show becoming boring. There’s never the burning need to escape Sanctuary anyway.