The Awkward Years
***
The Other Room, Cardiff
Tue 20 Sep
Lily wakes up. She’s on the bathroom floor. There’s vomit. She can’t remember how she got there. Someone is on the phone asking her if she’s okay. There’s someone in the bed. She doesn’t know who it is. She blacks out.
And so begins The Awkward Years, the first in The Other Room’s new season of shows. In his first collaboration with the venue since Constellation Street, Matthew Bulgo’s one-hander follows a young woman grappling with life in the aftermath of a traumatic event. Lily is delightfully wicked, her pain masked by a thickly-layered acerbic wit. Like the best observational comics, Bulgo is able to mine nuance from the unlikeliest of places. Seemingly trivial things like her refusing to be stamped at a nightclub, or being too hungover to text someone, instantly make Lily relatable. What it doesn’t do, deliberately, is make her likable.
Lauren O’Leary is exceptional in the lead role, throwing all of herself into it. Her vocal delivery is so good that its easy to forget just how physical the performance is. Director Dan Jones hardly ever lets her stand still on stage and, at times, the actor visibly shakes with emotion. As the story – and Lily’s life – unfolds O’Leary’s movement on stage also deteriorates. She jerks around on stage in response to Tic Ashfield’s pulsating score, while Angharad Evans drowns her in blue light. She really is drowning.
However, it’s when the story unravels that The Awkward Years loses some steam. The audience are led to believe that Lily’s trauma is over a man, but you’re willing the narrative to go in a different direction. It sticks to the path, though, and the story teeters to a well-worn climax. The play is no less engaging because of it, but there’s something telling about this story of a female protagonist, written by a male writer, that ends up being about her relationship to him. It’s deflating.
That aside, this is a wonderful piece of theatre that takes you through a gamut of emotions. It’s heartening that, despite being surrounded by seasoned fixtures of the Cardiff theatre scene like Dan Jones and Matthew Bulgo, it’s O’Leary who leaves the lasting impression. Her performance makes it.
words Jafar Iqbal
The Awkward Years is at The Other Room Theatre until Saturday 29 September 2018
Tickets: £12 / £10 www.otherroomtheatre.com