Fighting
Fighting is not an easy play to watch, but it’s important that we do! Fighting is about bipolar, a mental illness that few people understand – apart from those who suffer from it. Playwright Xavier Coy is one of those people. He wrote the play shortly after being diagnosed. “The play is raw,” he says, “and by far the most personal I have written. I had to write it that way to … help the audience understand that we are not crazy.”
Coy added a little wry humour to the script to “because if you don’t laugh you cry”, but the play still confronts the audience with the symptoms and emotional struggles portrayed – and the indifference of society.
Tom Bannerman’s set is bare but for three chairs. High walls sprayed mottled green and pink funnel the space, minimalising the three figures – Characters A, B and C – on the stage. Lighting (Robin Legal) and sound (Mehran Mortezaei) accentuate the feeling of growing tension and conflict.
Character A, played by Jay James-Moody, is the bipolar sufferer, waking after an almost sleepless night to be beset by the voices in his head – Characters B and C – who wake with him.
Character B is played by David Woodland, Character C by Sophie Highmore.
They “accompany” him throughout the day, sometimes as the voices in his head, sometimes for example, as the old couple for whom he works or the barista who makes his coffee.
Woodland’s voices and characters are usually unsupportive, often cynical, sometimes denigrating. Highmore’s characters are more sympathetic and encouraging. They are both constantly in Character A’s ear and mind, pushing his anxiety and confusion.
James-Moody’s character fights the mixture of emotions they create, trying desperately to keep some balance, retain some control. He shows the rising tension with wide eyes, strained facial expressions, body tension, clenched hands, restlessness, and changes of vocal pitch and pace.
The control needed in portraying so clearly the inner turmoil of the character is an indication of James-Moody’s research into the psychology of the disease and his empathy with the character. It must be very hard to sustain that edginess and anxiety for so long, and so often. It is certainly hard to watch.
Xavier Coy’s play explains not only the complexity of bipolar disease, but society’s lack of understanding of its symptoms and seriousness. This production makes it all disturbingly clear.
Carol Wimmer
Photos © Chris Lundie
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