Writer: Martha Watson Allpress
Director: Emily Aboud
Charly is brash and funny and open about her profession, which is dealing drugs. Ethical-ish drugs. A sort of wholefood shop, only with more marijuana and less spelt bread. Charly is feisty. Charly is living it large. Charly has two phones because one is not enough for her volume of trade. Charly lives in a tiny flat surrounded by dirty laundry and old pizza boxes, a flat she is scared to leave, a flat haunted by her departed lover.
Alexa Davies as Charly is absolutely superb, a motor-mouthed Duracell bunny of an actor, in constant motion around a set made out of giant sound-system speakers, directly addressing her audience, and revealing ever so carefully the heartbreak and the terror behind the street-smart surface. She makes Charly supremely relatable and sympathetic and she shows the character’s depression without looking for the audience’s sympathy. Talking for ninety minutes, she reveals a world full of event and people and ideas. Charly the character is crying out for companionship, but Alexa Davies the actor is entirely self-sufficient.
She does get a range of subtle assistance, however. The sound design by Anna Short creates a naturalistic soundscape and provides characterful voice-overs, gives a shot or two of Beastie Boy rap samples, and segues seamlessly into more abstract, less comfortable territory as Charly’s world disintegrates. Bethany Gupwell lights the proceedings with such sympathy that a panel of backlight and a string of fairy lights seem to offer a version of salvation. The alteration of naturalistic lighting and stark reflections of Charly’s emotional state are in dialogue with the actor. It is simple but very impressive.
Emily Aboud directs with a conductor’s awareness of tempo and rhythm. Alexa Davies is in motion all the time, and it makes the starkness of the setting very watchable, but the movement is driven by the character’s condition, not by a desire to pep up a piece of static drama. Aboud creates striking stage pictures out of not much, hits lots of symbolic notes with panache, and allows her magnificent actor all the space she needs.
The last element in this all-star all-women line-up is the writer, Martha Watson Allpress. Confident, real, relatable, and poetic, the words she provides are a joy to experience. There’s more than a little resemblance to the propulsive force of Kae Tempest, with the philosophy somewhat lighter and the jokes somewhat more prominent, but it’s good company to keep.
This is a timely, reflective, important piece of theatre with a tour-de-force performance and excellent stage-craft. It is splendid.
Runs until 15 June 2024
The Review Hub Score
Fierce Funny Fine
