I love The Shed, a temporary (or at least that is what I assume…) theatre on the Southbank, which successfully manages to combine impressive creativity with the intimacy of a small(er) venue.
nut, by debbie tucker green (lower case deliberate), which currently plays at The Shed, exemplifies this achievement. Relatively short at just 75 minutes, nut is a moving, unsettling, and thought-provoking poetic piece. Twenty-four hours after I saw it, I am still considering what it was that I experienced last night.
On one level, the play might be read as a relatively straight-forward narrative, but then, it isn’t. The central character is Elayne, who we are introduced to at the outset as she plans her funeral. We gather that Elayne is on medication, and we presume that this is for a ‘mental illness’ as self-harm is revealed.
Elaine is never alone on stage. This is a polyphonic piece, and throughout the play we are introduced to 6 other voices and characters, all of whom are integral to Elayne’s life. What is less clear, is whether these others are external or internal to Elayne’s world and psyche. Whichever, it matters little as we watch a fragment of Elayne’s life (and suffering) unfold before us.
I loved how the dialogue overlapped, creating a seamlessness between all the characters. Elayne’s world, with all its ‘players’, felt tangibly real, and authentic. The acting was hugely and uniformly impressive throughout.
In Scene One, Elayne considers what might be said at her funeral:
‘It would start with something bout how I am…
…Not no shit about how people think I am but
how I (am) how I really / am.’
‘They’d know cos I’d tellem. What bits I did
and what bits I didn’t. I’d leave a taste, leave
an odour somethin that’ll linger longer than
the service – an emotional stain -‘
Amidst the pathos there is also much humour, and we laugh, when invited to do so.
nuts is a mysterious piece, mysterious in the sense that it is obtuse and delivers no easy answers. That is also its strength, as it thus reflects the lived complexity of life, which is never straightforward.
‘…If there ent no bell. People get confused.
It’s confusing…
No bell is like no interest. Not interested.
Don’t care – don’t wanna / know.’
‘If you had an outward view, a curiosity, a
natural curiosity like normal people – …
…by havin no bell that works – and it’s not
bullshit – is confusing. Says something
about you – …
…says confusion, says you don’t give a shit…’
CQ
Living through the Arts 