Dear Eliza – The King’s Arms, Salford

Barbara Diesel’s Dear Eliza, currently touring UK fringe festivals, is a powerful and raw piece of theatre that explores the fear of the effects of mental ill health upon friendship and delves into the conversations that most people find too difficult, too upsetting, too challenging to have.

This one woman show presents as a live video recording of responses to letters from one friend to another. Except the letters were never sent; never received. The letters are found hidden away following the suicide of the sender. The impact on Eliza, the recipient, is recorded in response; ironically, never to be received by its intended beneficiary and cleverly pulling the audience into that role.

The structure of the piece allows a linear narrative which depicts the friendship between the two young women from the moment they meet at university and follows them through the next intense 3 years to the present.

Eliza’s anger at the actions of her friend is palpable. The letters reveal the length of the torment experienced, the depths of the despair and add to her pain, that she did not see what was hiding in plain sight as she struggled with her own mental health.

Diesel is very engaging. Direct, intelligent, frank and bold. Her pragmatism is both magnetic and truthful and we feel stable in the telling of her story of unstable mental health. Emotions are raw, her cynicism is real and her responses to the letters she receives are both heartwarming and heartbreaking in equal measure.

The performance is well paced and well-judged and allows space for the audience to absorb the sometimes difficult content.

The final letter, in response to those now found, contains a closing revelation and when Eliza declares ‘I’m done. I don’ think have anything left to say’ her journey seems complete.

Dear Eliza is not an easy watch and does raise issues that may be distressing to some audience members but it does have an important and meaningful conversation about what is often not said between friends until it is too late and in some way seemed cathartic for both audience and performer

Reviewer: Lou Kershaw

Reviewed: 13th July 2024

North West End UK Rating: