Writer: Laura Horton
Director: Stephanie Kempson
Laura Horton’s Breathless is a story that needs to be told, not for its extremity, but for how common it probably is and, despite that, how rarely it’s heard.
Sophie is a young up-and-coming writer living the life in London, going to galleries, theatres, bars and restaurants. From the outside, her life is entirely enviable. But when she’s suddenly evicted from her flat and has to pack up and move back to Plymouth with her parents, it becomes patently clear that she has a problem, rocking up with a huge moving van chock-a-block full, not of furniture, but of clothes.
Hoarding is generally associated with piles of old newspapers and mounds of junk, so Sophie doesn’t really think of herself like that. Instead, she’s a curator, collecting hundreds of different versions of herself, of who she might be: the sexual adventurer, the Booker-prize winner. With a new outfit, she could be anyone she wanted. No matter that she rarely actually wears the clothes., it’s the possibility they hold that she’s interested in.
Madeline Macmahon is high-pitched with a bird-like twitchiness, playing Sophie as naïve and not a little uptight. Her choices feel a bit laboured, laying all of Sophie’s anxieties on the surface rather than letting the story speak for itself. You can see her range clearly when she regularly steps into the multiple supporting characters, and in fact she seems much more comfortable when she’s playing the slightly lumbering, androgynous love-interest Jo. It’s easy to see why Sophie would be presented in this way when there’s only seventy minutes to explain who she is and what happened, but it’s just a bit cartoonish.
Similarly, whilst the bulk of the script explains Sophie’s issues via her nervous enthusiasm, allowing the audience to see for themselves that the clothes are a coping mechanism, the ending is a bit unnecessarily climactic and tidy, and takes away from the likelihood of the story.
One imagines that with a play about hoarding, the stage would be crammed with piles of stuff, but director Stephanie Kempson has opted instead for two rails lined with empty clothing bags. Wheeling about to create different spaces, the rails are a much cleverer way of expressing the seeming invisibility of this problem, as well as the fantasies Sophie ladens her wardrobe with.
Similarly, Ellie Showering’s simplistic soundtrack serves the quiet of this story: there’s no major catastrophe, nobody’s seriously hurt. But it’s still a serious problem that needs addressing; clothing hoarding is holding Sophie back from who she wants to be, taking up the space, as her mother tells her, of all the wonderful things yet to come.
Horton’s writing is funny and self-aware. She just needs to believe that the story is powerful enough without any melodramatic adornments.
Runs until 18 February 2023
