Secrets
Everybody loves a good story. Even more so when you are being let in on a secret – something hidden, shameful – or just embarrassing – and never confessed before. In this show, five actors who are in turn intriguing or funny or charming or disturbing play many characters who, for whatever reason, want to confide in us. Why? Why now? Why us? Motives for confession are not disclosed. Maybe the time is right. Maybe the secret cannot be held in any longer… Or maybe enough time has passed so that the painful or the tragic is now funny or just… weird.
Sancia Robinson and Nick Steain have collected what they claim are thirty verbatim stories. They certainly sound real – and sexy, funny, intimate, cringe-making, tragic, frightening, or humiliating. But from where? Just… from people. Some of the stories are no more than a few sentences. Others are perhaps three or four minutes.
Robinson and Steain and their cast – Susanna Qian, Zach Blampied and Yiana Pandelis – tell these stories. Character switches are suggested by minimal costume changes. Someone might bring on a chair or a stool, but that’s it on an otherwise bare, brightly lit stage. When a story is told, that’s it: get off, back behind the red curtain.
On the face of it, this shouldn’t work. There’s no narrative thread, no ‘development’. But it does work – and we are held from start to finish. The confessions are well chosen, and each is just the right length. Things keep moving along. Director Ben Grant has elicited detailed, nuanced performance from this talented cast – with Robinson and Qian particularly fine in their connection with the audience. Embarrassment is reflected in nervous pacing, avoiding eye contact. Shame is countered by defiant straight to the audience delivery. Shuffling about conveys a sheepish plea to be liked… anyway?
Robinson breaks our hearts when she tells of giving birth to a boy when she desperately wanted a girl… Pandelis cringes with embarrassment while confessing that they think Charlie Sheen is a good actor… Blampied, a big blokey bloke, goes home with a girl only to find it’s not what he expected… Qian tells of finding her real self in BDSM… Steain rounds off the show with a touching story of true friendship…
In the end, the stories are reassuring and demystifying: we recognise common experiences, and we realise we are not alone. Thirty secrets in one hour. Very much recommended.
Michael Brindley
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