Director: Lucy Hayes
Bitter Lemons pulls no punches. It is a frank, well-written debut offering about societal pressures on women and the directions they are pulled in, and as such is an intense watch. The show focuses on two women, a professional goalkeeper (Chanel Waddock) and a banker (Shannon Hayes) and is told from their two points of view, not in first-person though (there are no ‘I’s to be seen), but in second-person.
The use of ‘you’ by both actors is a little disconcerting to begin with, as is the use of a microphone to signpost that other characters are speaking, but once the set-up is clear, the dialogue is easy enough to follow and the toing and froing between the characters to move the two narratives forward makes sense.
The stories themselves are cleverly told in bursts of action, with occasional comedic moments and plenty of poignant ones too. Both characters find themselves pregnant at a point in time when their lives are seemingly about to take off, both have difficult decisions to make and the audience are let into their innermost thoughts as they battle with the pressures around them and on them while still reeling from this news.
Waddock is excellent as the goalkeeper, trying desperately to stop her body from letting her down and trying also to ignore the physicality of the job that she does and instead to constantly ‘predict the future’ to become the team’s No.1 goalie.
Hayes portrays the up-and-coming banker with thought and nuanced behaviours, her realisation that she may not necessarily have been picked to pitch for the latest banking deal because of her skill, instead because she was the right colour to make the bank seem more diverse is painful to watch, as it is conveyed so effectively.
The two stories are powerful as separate threads, and could easily have been left as such, but writer/director Lucy Hayes has intertwined them together at the end, placing the characters in the same place at the same time so that they meet. This interaction would have been a fitting ending on its own, but instead a narrative choice was made to bring the characters even closer together by making them (unrealised) half-sisters. This felt unnecessary and sent what had been a realistic set of circumstances into the realms of the highly unlikely.
Nevertheless, this was a gripping play that made some clear statements about women’s bodies and the coercive and often oppressive constraints placed on them.
Runs until 28 August 2023 | Image: Contributed
