Showing @ Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh until Sun 24 Aug @ times vary
We are creatures of meaning. We can’t help ourselves, when we come across the incomprehensible we have a need to contextualise and give it form and name. Bush Mouzarkel’s play challenges ideas of comprehensibility focusing on the true story of four women in Ireland who starved themselves to death.
Before the women died they shredded all their correspondence and documents. The play reflects this violent deconstruction, avoiding anything that could prompt a conclusion or provide a clue to the women’s motivation, jumbling and distorting events and time frames. Every technique or technical trick is there to avoid the revelatory. Distorted sounds block out dialogue and the actresses portray their agonising moments through dumb show and physical theatre, with the result like watching their lives in a fairground mirror. The only words from the women are from the letters of one of them found under her pillow, but even these are used in fragments.
Dead Centre have produced the sort of challenging, experimental and thought provoking work that the Traverse was made for. This isn’t simple fare for the audience, it’s disconcerting and puzzling and sometimes difficult to watch which makes it all the more fascinating.