HAIRWORM : DARKNESS MADE VISIBLE

Emma Wrights play HAIRWORM is playing as part of the Old 505 Theatre’s FreshWorksFemme Festival.

It is the story of a woman’s battle with her eating disorder.

Interestingly this is not a one woman show. We have the ill woman and then a chorus of nine who voice her thoughts and concerns. The play has been written in a stream of consciousness flow. The chorus works well within this frame as her jangled thoughts are passed around the different member of the chorus. 

The play’s title refers to the way that an eating disorder can be compared to a hairworm, a parasite that can eat its way inside a body.

We are taken deeply into this woman’s illness. How she is ‘covered in dirt, I dug the hole’. She becomes so ill that she has to go into hospital. The Doctor tells her family that she is at the risk of multiple organ failure. Her family come to visit her but she is hard work and very protective of her own space.

They end up bringing her home to help her with her recovery. They remove all the locks in the house so that she can’t act out and lock herself in  the bathroom or the bedroom. Her sister isn’t supportive of her as she sees her behaviour as being very attention seeking.

In Wright’s play none of the character’s have names which makes a reviewer’s job a fraught one. The piece is well performed. Rebekah Parsons plays the ill young woman and the cast of the chorus of eight comprising Phoebe Atkinson, Bernadette Fam, Jennifer Hart, Alex King, Amelia Robertson-Cunningham, Grace StamnasSophie Strykowski and Laura Wilson.

Jess Davis’ directing is assured.  Cecilia Strachan’s sound design is edgy and atmospheric with the persistent sound of a heartbeat amplified unnerving.

There is some humour in this dark play with, at one time, a few anorexic and bulimic jokes thrown in just to add a little much needed  lightness.  After all humour is one of the ways we learn to survive. Remember the comedian who called himself Steady Eddie who had cerebral palsy!

We leave the theatre with our rose coloured glasses truly shattered. Eating disorders is ‘a puzzle of my own making’, ‘the tyrannical rage of my disorder’, a complex issue and the treatment for it is lengthy and requires a lot of patience.

Emma Wright’s  HAIRWORM is currently playing the Old 505 Theatre, Alice Street Newtown. There is only one more performance, tomorrow (Saturday night) at 8pm.