Reviews

What a great vehicle Redline Productions has chosen to highlight the under-tapped wealth of women in theatre! Written by a woman, directed, designed and stage managed by women, and performed by nine fine, fit, feisty, female actors, this prize-winning first play by American playwright Sarah DeLappe raises the bar in the determined pursuit of recognition and equity across the arts.

Eight people are lost to suicide each day in Australia and globally it happens every 40 seconds.

Shocking as that statistic is, the devastation wreaked by suicide doesn’t stop with the tragic finality of the actual act. Across the world, from the second after the tragedy occurs, families and friends must deal with lifetimes of facing the reality of their loss.

Destroy, She Said is part of the new Duras: Desire & Destruction season at La Mama. Four guests in an isolated hotel in the midst of a forest; a tennis game is heard but never seen, a strange card game that is somewhat foreboding. Is there madness looming? Or is this a gathering of post- holocaust  German Jews seeking rebirth?

Though this solo performance may, at first glance, appear to be a tale of autobiography by its performer – such is the passion and personal touch with which Amer Hlehel presents it – Taha is, in fact, a spirited, richly textured telling of selected experiences from the life of Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Ali (1931-2011).