THE DROWNED GIRL | THEATRE REVIEW
Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, Thurs 1 Oct
Fresh from the success of her play Blud at The Other Room, writer Kelly Jones turns her hand to performing her own work. The Drowned Girl sees Jones perform an hour-long monologue that mines fertile territory. Family, work, memory and grief are all intertwined in a powerful, wry take on how we see other people – and, more importantly, how they see us.
The setting of the studio space at Chapter seemed a tad incongruous for such an intimate piece of work, and the space did seem at times to dwarf Jones. This was partly offset by having the sound designer Chris Young on stage, a decision that may have been for technical considerations, as it was difficult to ascertain any aesthetic or theatrical reason for this. The set design also seemed lost in the cavernous darkness of the studio, the nautical theme only really evident to those sitting in the first three or four rows. However, the power of the piece comes through strongly in the writing, and despite some minor blemishes, the acting as well.
Jones’ play is a fantasia on loss and grief, offset by the gradual awakening of self and recognition of a new way of life that the future might hold. Supermarket worker Kelly, having nearly drowned as a young girl, has her fantasy world of being a mermaid offset by the drudgery of shelf stacking at Asda. Jones’ keen eye for the quotidian brings into sharp relief the soul-destroying nature of the work, as she imagines the aisles of tinned tuna filling up with water, or the gossipy judgements of co-workers and customers transformed into a witches coven.
The death of her grandmother leads to her kidnapping young cousin Noah (the sea theme continuing in the choice of name), and a shared sense of difference as Kelly’s gay identity, intuitively sensed by her grandmother in buying her the work of Stella Duffy, is mirrored by her cousin’s attraction to a pink Polly Pocket. So, despite the dark humour and the terrible stages of grief, there is a sense of hope at the end, where the dead live on in the memories of the living. Jones is a terrific writer, and although her performance was deeply personal, I kept thinking what a less invested actor would bring to this. Autobiographical monologue is always a tricky thing to pull off, and Jones, along with director Anna Poole, just about manage it without the piece becoming too sentimental or indulgent.
words ALEX WREN