Those of you who follow my writing on here, or Buzz’s coverage of Welsh-language theatre, will know that I am obsessed with Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru. I am a fangirl. I have been so excited to see them go from strength to strength since the pandemic. However, the latest offering for the National Eisteddfod – Brên. Calon. Fi. by Bethan Marlow – left me feeling a little cold.

Set in somewhere between the late 90s and early 00s, the play showcases Fi: a young, sapphic Welsh speaker who has been commissioned to write a poem by Theatr Gen on her experience of being a queer working-class person. Fi breaks down and begins to overshare with the audience, explaining her relationships and experiences in the hope that she can express something that she feels her poetry cannot. On the surface, it looks to be a funny and honest discussion about the complexities of living with multiple identities that often don’t mesh well – and, as a queer person, I was really excited to see it, but was left feeling disappointed.

Lowri Morgan’s performance as Fi is funny, charming and warm: her comedic timing is excellent, and her ability to turn the tone on a sixpence keeps a bitty and, in some ways quite chaotic, show on its toes. Her engagement with the audience is soft and welcoming, her rapport with the people she engages with is excellent and – in true Theatr Genedlaethol fashion – you really feel safe and welcome in the space throughout.

This does bring me to one of my main bugbears with the piece, however: its use of audience participation and fourth-wall breaking. The conceit of a one-person show where the character comes to do an event and then it doesn’t go as planned is nothing new in theatre, Welsh theatre very much included: every writer has likely written a monologue in that style during their career. If not the most inspired choice in the world, there isn’t anything inherently wrong with it – but the way it’s implemented in Brên. Calon. Fi. is incredibly strange.

The show begins with Fi reciting a poem on the lesbian working-class experience that has been “commissioned by Theatre Gen”. She then breaks out of that, feeling she isn’t doing a good enough job just by expressing herself through poetry. A little contrived, but fine – so far, I’m on board. It then gets a little odd and jumbled. Fi asks an audience member to go to the back of the set to make her a tea, a funny idea which could have worked if, say, they’d gone backstage. As it is, there’s a tea-making station ready on the stage. It feels odd and out of place.

Later, Fi asks audience members to do things like unpack their clothes onto a shelf (something that is never returned to) and asks others to dress up as Santa while waving red flags. The whole point of the narrative is that this is all an unplanned aside because the protagonist doesn’t feel that she can express herself well enough – so why does it all feel so inauthentic and staged?

Brên. Calon. Fi. also falls into the trap that many hour-long monologues fall into: trauma-dumping, then fixing all the character’s problems in an hour. In between some light, fluffy bits about fancying straight girls and going to nightclubs for the first time, Fi shares some incredibly uncomfortable and deeply disturbing pieces of information. If your character is unstable enough to stop the job they were ostensibly paid to do and manically talk about being abused with sex toys, they’re not well enough to figure out their path to healing by the end of the show. It’s just not feasible, and it feels inauthentic.

I recognise that it feels like options are limited when you want to complete your story arc by the end of the show, but a more honest thing to close with is the character acknowledging that something needs to change, but they don’t know what yet. Saying “I realise I am enough” is a cop-out used too often for complex characters: a get-out-of-jail-free card for writers unsure how to close off.

There are, I’m sure, some people who will feel completely different to me about the show. I hope there are people who felt held and seen in that space, and feel my criticisms are completely unfounded. I hope, if and when Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru remount the show, that someone messages me saying I was wrong, as the standards they’ve set when it comes to monologues in recent years are pretty high. Brên. Calon. Fi. just wasn’t up to par for me.

Brên. Calon. Fi., Ynysangharad Park, Pontypridd, Thurs 7 Aug

words HARI BERROW