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Everywoman at London’s Bunker Theatre: You’re GD Right This is Universal

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The riveting new work Everywoman finally offers a worthy counterpart to the classic 15th century morality play Everyman. Well, not ‘counterpart’ so much as ‘play that actually reflects the human condition and not just male whining’ (see e.g. Philip Roth). This short, powerful one-woman show runs the gamut of emotions, possibilities, and traumas around procreating, from abortion to miscarriage to loss to whether to bear and/or raise children at all. As Everyman’s author is ‘anonymous’, so too has the real writer behind this new work remained anonymous, so that it can be considered everyone’s story. And although it’s woman-driven storytelling, and radically so, I can’t think of one kind of person who wouldn’t feel seen by this. Sure the only full-fledged production of Everyman I’ve seen was the weird modernized take that took place mainly in a night club and infuriated me, but this Everywoman is the one that deserves the ‘universal’ status, despite the failure of the powers that be to ever attribute that to women’s work.

Obviously, there are content warnings to this show like never before. Take Dear Evan Hansen’s suicide content warning but for everything related to pregnancy and children and multiply that level by a solid thousand. The show follows the child-facing decisions of its sole performer, a captivating Jade Williams, at various points in her life when she has been pregnant, or wanted to be pregnant, or didn’t want to be, and how she felt during all of it. It also has a great deal of what I consider Next to Normal backstory about potential child loss, which was very well done and stressful and harrowing. I don’t know if anyone who has faced this sort of unspeakable loss would be able to make it through this section. The tiny room, the sole performer right there, baring her soul, it all creates such an intimacy that was breathtaking and so powerful that it was often distressing.

Despite repeatedly saying “I am Jade Williams and…” (a few too many times, perhaps, at least in the last section), this isn’t actually our fine performer’s story, and what of it actually happened to the actual writer is unclear too – but what’s the ‘truth’ is not relevant. It’s all truth, it’s all experiences that have happened to so many people and that’s what matters, not determining which parts were autobiographical on the anonymous writer’s part. Kind of missing the point chief!

The first section, with its frequent blackouts separating short, often funny statements, is cleverly done, setting a sarcastic and humorous tone but announcing how dark and real things would get. The second section, or chapter, as we learn more about this ‘Jade’ and her relationship and experiences, is a sharp contrast but equally brilliant in its ruthless openness. With sensitive and elegant direction by Amelia Sears, the tiny show accomplishes so much with effective minimal staging – a bathtub, buckets of water (that seemed to stay hot?? how!), candles (my god the candles). The final section, as Jade explains that it’s not exactly her actual life she’s been recounting, feels unnecessary since this is all about being universal tales, and so lost the tiniest bit of the magic. But overall, something this real and candid and, yes, universal is a triumph of honest storytelling.

INFORMATION

Hey yo Ev (what husbo p and I call Everyman because of that godawful Chiwetel production so I guess it’s what we’ll call Everywoman too) plays at the Bunker Theatre until Saturday Feb 22. The show is just under an hour (at press night was about 57 minutes). After a ten minute break, there is an approximately 20-minute confession by a different writer/performer every night. These confessions are private and not up for review, so I’ll simply say that I am still blown away by the clever writing and ingenuity of the one I was lucky enough to hear.

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