DramaNorth East & YorkshireReview

Mycelial – Northern Stage, Newcastle

Reviewer: Lesley Oldfield

Writer: Catrina McHugh

Director: Laura Lindow

Mycelial opens with a gardener, her hands plunged deep in a pot of earth – just the place where a mycelium, a fungal network, might grow, spread, and bear fruit.

Patricia Jones plays the gardening Geordie who’s seen a thing or two over the years. She has a dog, a favourite tablecloth, a sense of humour, and needs a new fridge. She is also a sex worker.

Catrina McHugh’s one-act play, performed on Northern Stage’s Stage 2, introduces us to nine sex workers in all. We glimpse and are moved by their lives, loves and hates as a network of common understanding mushrooms across the stage and spreads into the audience.

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There is a lot to take in, not least a potted history of the Troubles from Eva O’Connor’s Rocket Girl, and a precise explanation (from Yael Elisheva’s character) of how the container ship Ever Given became wedged in the Suez Canal, blocking trade across the world – oh, and not forgetting their long list of what to look for in a food mixer.

The play from Newcastle’s talented Open Clasp Theatre Company was co-created with sex worker activists and has very serious themes, only recommended for over 15s, taking in exploitation and abuse, self-harm, racism, prejudice, capitalism, poverty and more.

Yet it manages to draw laughter as Muire McCallion’s character takes a bath in a shop window, or as Danielle James, who has a great on-screen role as a troubled intersex character, makes a wry aside.

Michelle Huirama as activist Erana, tells us (among other things) how sex work has changed. Chess Tomlinson’s character tells us how lockdown helped her access therapy. Alexis Meshida as Red Boots addresses transphobia and Lexi Clare as Jessica has to figure out how to answer her daughter’s questions about her work. But they are each more than this.

Each character has their own minimal set on stage, yet director Laura Lindow manages to create movement and connection with the ostensibly static set-up, aided by the use of projections, video, and audio.

There is a clear message to decriminalise prostitution and to allow sex workers to work safely, but also to understand each other more, and simply let people be themselves. And there is, thankfully, hope to go home with.

Runs until 28th October 2023

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The Yorkshire & North East team is under the editorship of Jacob Bush. The Reviews Hub was set up in 2007. Our mission is to provide the most in-depth, nationwide arts coverage online.

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