A series of 11 mono­logues about love and sex writ­ten by Uther Dean. It’s per­formed by 6 women — Alice May Con­nol­ly, Bri­anne Kerr, Han­nah Banks, Freya Daly Sad­grove, Hilary Pen­war­den, and Kegan Carr Fran­sch.

From the start we’re invit­ed into a sur­re­al world where the object of love and/or sex might not be human. The mono­logues are intense, obses­sive, des­per­ate, breath­less, fun­ny, poignant, and alto­geth­er human.

Con­nol­ly describes an intense rela­tion­ship from the first meet­ing through to the end in her first mono­logue. She’s cheer­ful the whole way through but the sense that she real­ly knows what is going on lurks under­neath her words. Her sec­ond mono­logue is a call to arms against per­fect cou­ples. (You can imag­ine how it ends.) Kerr’s first mono­logue is about an obses­sion that affects her abil­i­ty to stay pro­fes­sion­al at work. Her char­ac­ter mis­reads the sit­u­a­tion and ends up in a hor­ri­ble posi­tion. Her sec­ond mono­logue is des­per­ate­ly sweet and very human­is­tic. Kerr gives us two clear char­ac­ters – one all inter­nal, the oth­er all exter­nal. Banks’ two mono­logues are quite dif­fer­ent. The first is a char­ac­ter who can’t bear to be touched (for a very good rea­son mind.) All unre­quit­ed love and lone­li­ness her pain is pal­pa­ble. The sec­ond mono­logue is the exact oppo­site. Pas­sion­ate, breath­less, swoon‑y, fast paced.  Sad­grove gets what I think are the two most dif­fi­cult mono­logues. Her first one fea­tures a colos­sal squid and con­sists of her read­ing from cards. Smug and twee are the two words that come to mind while watch­ing. The sec­ond is a list of ‘things to do’ which reminds me of one of my favourite poems. This time she’s full of ennui and anx­i­ety. Good stuff. Pen­war­den is onstage pro­vid­ing music and sound effects dur­ing the whole per­for­mance so it’s fair enough that she per­forms only one mono­logue. She does this beau­ti­ful­ly, full of sor­row for missed oppor­tu­ni­ties. Carr Fransch’s first mono­logue is about love and sus­te­nance. Her char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of the ‘oth­er’ is fun­ny – just before things turn more sin­is­ter. Her sec­ond char­ac­ter is quite dif­fer­ent. She is puz­zled, proud, and venge­ful in her role as exposed lover.

It is won­der­ful to see the shifts that most of the actors are able to make in their tones and phys­i­cal­i­ty for each mono­logue. As a show­case for these actors it works real­ly well. I like Dean’s writ­ing. It’s poet­i­cal and goes to weird places in order to explore what it is to be human.

 

NB. It con­tains coarse lan­guage, and descrip­tions of sex acts and vio­lence (both phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al.)