Writer: Aoifie Kennan
Director: Gabriella Bird
A comedy may not, at first, seem the most appropriate vehicle to talk about self-harm. And even though Scratches’ two actors discuss the issue sensitively, the balance between poignancy and camp shenanigans isn’t entirely satisfactory.
For all intents and purposes, Scratches should be a one-woman play. Writer Aoifie Kennan is certainly capable of holding a room on her own for 60 minutes. The narration of her story about the sadness that enveloped her in the final year of university doesn’t require other actors to play the handful of characters close to her. Kennan’s first boyfriend self-harms too but it’s not vital that another actor play him. Or that the same actor plays two doctors and two parents, who are also doctors.
Each of these roles is played by Kennan’s best friend Zak Ghazi-Torbati. He camps it up no end, and he is often very funny, but this broad comedy threatens to undermine the seriousness of the play. The two genres – confessional drama and camp tomfoolery – can often be compatible bedfellows, but not here.
Kennan is aware of the problems that accompany a play that is quite graphic in its description of self-harm even though the actors never say the word ‘knife’. At the start she talks about the Werther Effect named after Goethe’s novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, which led to a epidemic of suicides in late 18th Century Europe. She worries that in talking about self-harm, the play could influence people in the audience to experiment with cutting.
Later on in the play, in a metatheatrical scene, Ghazi-Torbati mentions his discomfort in the play’s themes, but importantly he does not intend to silence Kennan’s story either. It’s an interesting dilemma, and one that could be explored in more detail. The ethics about putting on such a play could be the central plot here and add some philosophical background to the process of autobiographical theatre-making.
Kennan is very honest about her self-harming and the advice she received from the doctors she sought out for help. One suggested that she should try Mind Gym, and Kennan is full of the disdain it deserves. Her experience could be extremely helpful to those in the same position, and so it’s a shame that every important insight is followed by an upbeat song or a dance.
Both actors give it their all here and are engaging throughout, but within this two-hander a solo show is begging to come out.
Runs until 5 February 2023
