Flesh Disease

This play strives to shed light on the experience of living with a mental illness for a group of five women who have been meeting in a craft group for some time. The characters have built trust and comfort in the group and the play starts and then drops in and out of sharing quite ordinary verbal and social interactions.

Then there are episodes of intrusive lighting and sounds which are the background to expressive movement and disrupted verbal expressions of distress.

Angelique Malcolm, Yoni Prior, Sasha Leong, Sonia Marcon and Lesley Coleman perform with commitment and passion. The set and costume design by Betty Auhl effectively made the most of the small space.

There is little chance for the audience to develop a connection to the performers and the audience is left on the outside looking at the performance of difficulty and personal disruption. The movement of the performers was carefully done but was constrained by the technical abilities of the performers and the small space.

This is an interesting attempt to bring mental illness more fully into the consciousness of the audience and, as more work is done to understand and embrace those living with mental illness perhaps the writer’s brave hope that there could be an expression of the absolute truth of the experience of mental illness will be accomplished.

Ruth Richter

Photographer: Darren Gill