Devised by: The Cast
Director: El Chen
A six-strong devised piece In Search of Exquisite Medicines involves a lot of screaming, shouting and determination to smash down the constrictions of life and other limitations that act as barriers to the development and fulfilment of the performers. Structured around chapters about goodness, love and despair, director El Chen provides a substantial introduction, asking the audience to be open to the experience of the show and the things that it might provoke in the days and weeks to come.
It’s always a dangerous thing to over-explain your concept because the show needs to speak for itself without audience conditioning or excuse, while the details of the creative and rehearsal process that Chen outlines are really for a programme essay or Q&A. In the middle of the performance, actor Beatriz Do Ó also speaks to the audience about the show itself, anticipating bemused reactions and saying it’s alright to be confused because this is a “very, very weird show” but “an attempt at something.”
What eventually transpires on stage is built around a Mary Oliver poem, ‘Wild Geese,’ from which the chapter titles are taken and is flashed up on screen as the conclusion to In Search of Exquisite Medicines. But it would give greater shape to the show to see it at the beginning or printed in the programme in place of Chen’s extensive director’s note about seeking beauty in all things. Seeing Oliver’s poem eventually gives retrospective purpose to the sketches and moments that have gone before but seeing it upfront would better support dramatic momentum and create the lyricism the cast aspires to.
The piece itself is a series of mixed scenes, musical numbers and movements emerging from life experiences, hopes and concerns loosely sewn together with a theme of connection and loneliness. The all-female cast clearly feels controlled, and several ideas involve a nominated ‘director’ figure telling the women when to speak and at what volume, actively managing their narratives as they talk over one another. They say things they hate, or love or long for while Disney’s The Little Mermaid sings about wanting to be someone and somewhere else.
Performed across 1 hour and 50 minutes including an interval this is an experimental show and one that avoids plot or through lines in the traditional sense. Instead, it is both an exercise in storytelling – those belonging to individuals and borrowed from others – as well as an attempt to communicate a consistent feeling of constraint and finding empowerment through the memories and dreams that emerge from the workshop approach Chen has developed for In Search of Exquisite Medicine.
It does need finessing – even the most abstract and fluid shows need to evolve their messaging to keep the audience on side – and being more explicit about Oliver’s influence and how the various ideas emerged from that original inspiration. The cast, Do Ó Mikaela Dragon, Kathleen Murtagh, Katie Quinn, Merlin Stevens and Holly Walters, have taken a leap of faith in their approach to this show but they need to have a collective confidence in what they have created. No apologies and no explanations, their show just needs to be.
Reviewed on 6 April 2024
