Tag: PTSD

I’M A PHOENIX, BITCH

Large Theatres

Written and Performed by Bryony Kimmings

Directed by Kirsty Housley and Bryony Kimmings

HOME

I was blown away by I’m a Phoenix, Bitch when I saw it at Edinburgh Fringe in August. Like many of the audience I literally staggered out of that performance like someone had literally tilted my world and walked me through the dark side of a nightmare reality. Thankfully Bryony Kimmings is acutely mindful of her safety and that of her audience. This is a safe space and “new Bryony” has plenty of tools for any possible apocalyptic scenario. It’s time to find the little anchors and rafts that exist amongst all this chaos that will help you…in the future.

This is an autobiographical performance by an artist who has never shied away from painful, personal subject matter. Shows like Sex Idiot, 7 Day Drunk and Fake It ‘Til You Make It have firmly established Kimmings as an important artist. This show explores her experiences in 2015 when she lost her partner, her home, her sanity and almost lost her baby son. The show is structured around her subsequent experience of a Psychotherapy technique called “rewinding” used to help clients confront and deal with past traumas. Using micro sets on stage that recreate various scenarios, Kimmings films herself and these projections cleverly recreate how the mind can be trapped in a memory or experience, and how observing it again can help gain emotional perspective to cope with trauma.

As a self styled “Psychotherapy movie star” Kimmings embraces elements of camp horror schtick, brooding black and white Hitchcock and vivid Lynchian dystopias as she plays out a range of rewinds. We meet the breakfast nymph complete with a full English and the requisite vicious metal man trap. We see a girlish Bryony playing house as she plays out the fairytale complete with miniature Oxfordshire cottage with wisteria on the outside and lashings of Farrow and Bell on the inside. There is a high achieving Mum-to-be in billowing kaftan bingeing on NCT classes and natural childbirth. As each scene is unveiled Kimmings is transformed with wigs and makeup while in between there is a sharp contrast as the new Bryony breaks the fourth wall red haired and clad in black gym clothes. This Bryony makes recordings for her son Frank in the hope he will understand their journey whilst also battling a harsh leaking, creeping inner monologue that frequently attempts to derail her hard fought for sanity and confidence as a mother.

Visually this production is both bleak and yet utterly gorgeous. This is dark subject matter but Kimmings has a lightness of touch and a real natural warmth that is always engaging. The projections give this show a magical realism especially when she steps into the projection itself. The utter poignancy of a grief crazed mother frantically burying the unbearable reminders of the future she had imagined for her child seem not crazy or remotely like giving up on her son. Like a Phoenix this is a mother preparing to be a mother to a “new” baby Frank.

This is a harrowing journey into post-partum psychosis, PSTD, and a parent’s nightmare experience of seeing their baby become critically ill with a cruel and damaging health condition. This is no blissed out paradise model and there is no happy ending to this story but there is a statement of hope to sustain us all in the real world. This is an important performance to witness as what audience members hopefully take away is a permission to see psychotherapy or counselling as an option to support them if ever confronted with their own personal apocalypse. Bryony can now see her horrific experiences in 2015 as just bad luck. Her fears for her baby did not make anything bad happen. Many parents fear for their children as a natural built in instinct for their survival, in post-partum psychosis those fears are hideously magnified. We can all prepare for the worst. For Bryony her fears were realised but thankfully she has risen like a Phoenix and although battle scared, both her and her loved ones have survived.

HOME 26th -30th November 2019

Images by The Other Richard

Othello

Large Theatres

Everyman, Liverpool

Written by William Shakespeare

Directed by Gemma Bodinetz

In this new production of Othello the past and present collide. A hand-embroidered hankerchief and a smartphone symbolise our human need to love and be loved, to accept and be accepted; and the destructive power of betrayal and fake news. Director Gemma Bodinetz and the repertory company at the Everyman have produced an Othello that is absolutely fresh and timeless. There is no sense of the frustration of a 400 year old play being shoehorned to appease or entice a modern audience. It just works from start to finish. The much heralded casting of Golda Rosheuvel as a female Othello is both exciting and intriguing. However this becomes at times almost irrevelant as it is the emotional depth and intensity of her performance that stand out as the most pertinert aspects of this casting choice.

Golda Rosheuvel is Othello as an army General that is female, black and gay. She is successful, respected and courageous. It could have been so obvious to play her Othello as a butch lesbian with a crew cut and and a jutting jaw. Instead we see a strong, intelligent woman who has the quiet certainty of being in love and feeling loved. She is not large in physical stature and is womanly whether in battle fatigues or a simple flowing gown. She is measured and reflective in all areas of her life until confronted by Iago whose thwarted ambition and jealous vilification of others conspire to destroy her faith in love and honour.

Patrick Brennan is undeniably effective as the charming manipulator dripping his poison with all the reasonableness and solicitation of a corrupt politician at a General Election. His Iago is odious as he reveals his plans to the audience and truly terrifying in his own certainty regarding his actions. He is the epitome of the reasonable white man hellbent on obliterating anyone who is “other”, as he moves around the stage spitting honeyed venom like Trump on Twitter.

Cerith Flinn plays Cassio as a taut, muscled squaddie with a heart of gold whether fighting honourably on the battlefied, carousing with a bottle in hand or wooing the winsome Bianca – a delightfully comedic Leah Gould. His Cassio is a fitting replacement for Othello as a young soldier with a pure heart and good intentions.

Emily Hughes performance is fresh and vivid. She combines girlish delicacy and youth with gritty determination to seek out fairness and equality for others. She is fair and beautiful but her character is what really defines why Othello loves her. She loved me for the dangers I had passed, And I loved her that she did pity them.

The swift unravelling of Othello’s calm reason into jealous, vengeful rage might seem at odds with this professional soldier and loving wife. Iago has broken the implicit trust essential between comrades on the battlefield and partners in a happy marriage. The result is a tortured woman stricken with epilepsy and deep emotional trauma. A modern take on this might well be an Othello suffering from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) who is battle scarred and reacting to new trauma with paranoia, dissociative seizures and the hyperarousal of murderous rage.

The final scenes played out in a floaty, white gauze bedchamber are gut wrenchingly poignant. This gossamer veil highlights the ephemeral nature of life and gives a dreamlike softness to both the brutality and the tenderness of the murder scene. Such betrayal and heartbreak plays out and the emotional struggle for Othello is palpable. Even knowing the end of this 400 year old play, expectations feel suspended as if on a heartbeat the outcome might still go either way.

At pivotal points the audience are spotlit by powerful searchlights or the beam of a single torch. On reflection it feels like an invitation by Shakespeare and also by Bodinetz to look at ourselves and those around us and reflect on what we see. Perhaps there is an invitation to start accepting ourselves- regardless of gender or ethnicity as all being capable of strong and powerful emotions. That does not have to be dangerous when we recognise they can make us protective, nurturing parents, successful and happy in our relationships and productive in our work. It is only when we use labels to divide and diminish that we lessen ourselves and our humanity. Like Othello – male, female or gender neutral we are perfectly imperfect. No more and never any less.

OTHELLO Sat 28 April to Tues 10th July

Images by Jonathon Keenan