Writers: Ailun Zhou and Robert Price
Director: Robert Price
Trapped by crippling self-doubt, agoraphobia and a lifetime of not quite fitting in, Chloe has been in her apartment for two years, unable to leave. But now she decides to film a self-tape audition, a chance to play a character just like her, although every time she switches on the camera, the words won’t come. She doesn’t know who she is or how to present herself. Ailun Zhou and Robert Price’s new play, The Last Self Tape, playing at the Cockpit Theatre, has moments of character insight in a long monologue, but with a lot of material to cover, its current structure needs to work much harder to support the actor and the audience through the building drama of the story.
There are some potentially interesting anchor points that Zhou and Price’s show doesn’t make the most of, and instead of punctuating the tale with curtailed attempts to self-tape, the influence of key men who shape Chloe’s experience could make the piece stronger, charting her gradual erosion and the retreat from the world that follows. There is the stepfather that she tries to sabotage before becoming close to, and a series of arrogant men who affect her career progression and feelings of self-worth, from the science professor who encourages deception to the acting tutor who patronises Chloe and later the philosophising director who refuses to take her seriously.
These men are currently jumbled up – and could remain so – told out of order, but The Last Self Tape could be better at charting a course between them and the cumulative effect they have on her self-esteem and self-worth. Likewise, there is eventually some good stuff in here about Chloe’s personality, the feelings of depression and even the beginning of self-harm that seem to be the consequences of the way she is treated and subsequently sees herself, yet too little of that is currently grounded in a clear sense of Chloe’s personality and the continual pressures she both endures externally and puts on herself.
Tonally, Zhou and Price have created a fairly even monologue that doesn’t quite develop its own drive in the static performance that Price directs, largely to the front of the Cockpit space despite having the audience on three sides, losing some of the potential dynamism in the process. And what the audience never really investigates is who Chloe is, why do people retreat from her so readily in collegiate situations and how do the writers want the audience to respond to that? Using video projection is a great way to capture the performative Chloe, the woman and actor she wants to present, but it could also be used to question her own narrative, giving the audience a bit of extra jeopardy by wondering if the woman relating her sorry tale is everything she claims, or if is she just telling us her side?
Zhou’s performance is engaging and there is clearly a lot of empathy for Chloe as the piece unfolds, exploring all the ways she has been undermined and made to feel lesser, yet for the ending to work, there also needs to be an inner steel or positivity, something that, after shooing the world away, makes her really want to embrace it once again.
Runs until 28 November 2025
