Merit is at The Drum, Plymouth until 14th February 2015
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Rebecca Lacey and Lizzy Watts. Photo by Steve Tanner |
We’re in Spain in the age of austerity – 2013, to be precise
– and Sofia is one of the lucky ones: she has a job. Increasingly, however,
working as PA to one of the country’s richest bankers is causing friction with
her family. As Sofia is no more talented, intelligent or industrious than her
unemployed friends, her mother wonders, what could be the real reason that
Sofia was successful where so many others have failed? Might she have given more
than just the right answers in the interview?
It is through the prism of this prickly mother-daughter
relationship that Alexandra Wood explores the impact of the global financial
crisis on families and communities; how the growing chasm between the haves and
have-nots might distort value systems on both sides. While mother Patricia needles
away at Sofia about the nature of her relationship with boss Antonio – whose
place at the top of the capitalist machine proves that he is ‘rapacious,
corrupt, corrupting’, a manipulator of markets and people – Sofia finds herself
forced to defend her employer, mainly through reference to his philanthropic
activities and charitable donations. As mother and daughter thrust and parry
their way through the debate, with Patricia increasingly resorting to emotional
blackmail to get her way, it becomes clear that the truly ruthless manipulator
might be much closer to home.
Matthew Wright’s set design, with its mix of tiled stone
steps and the suggestion of modernist glass and steel, conveys the clash of old
and new Spain, of traditional family values against pernicious individualism. The
stepped layout allows for director Jennie Darnell to be explicit about the
power dynamics of each exchange, a little clunkily at times, but the curved
Perspex at the top of the set adds an extra dimension in the way it refracts
the performers’ reflections, so the dominant character is simultaneously seen
in miniature, and vice versa.
However, while the mother-daughter relationship is well portrayed,
with solid performances from Rebecca Lacey (Patricia) and Lizzy Watts (Sofia), the
whole seems hampered by the on-the-nose dialogue about financial inequality, and
the stagey way the argument is handed back and forth. Spain may well be the
stated setting, but it seems perfunctory at best (perhaps because the play
started life as a short piece in response to the Royal Court’s PIIGS season, in
which playwrights were tasked with tackling austerity in the five EU countries hardest
hit); while Patricia occasionally channels ‘old Spanish mama’ by sitting
forwards in a knee-grabbing stance, Sofia could be from anywhere. And maybe
that’s the point – we’re all global capitalists now – but at times it seems almost
as if the two actors are in different plays.
But most troublesome is the twist (no spoilers, don’t worry),
which, when it arrives, drops heavily into the narrative like a boulder from
outer space, making no logical sense and adding neither nuance nor revelation
to anything that’s occurred up to that point. And it’s at this here that Woods’
text, which had been by turns engaging and entertaining, albeit somewhat
repetitive in places, loses the plot completely. This piece needs further
development before it’s ready to fly.
Written by Alexandra Wood
Directed by Jennie Darnell
Cast: Rebecca Lacey, Lizzy Watts
Running time: 1 hour 15 minutes (no interval)
Reviewed for Exeunt
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