Scotland

Surrender – Summerhall, Edinburgh

A much anticipated, new play by Sophie Swithinbank, who had such Fringe success last year with Bacon, transferring to London, via Australia before ending up at New York’s Soho Playhouse. Not bad at all for a talented young playwright

A single chair awaits actress, Phoebe Ladenburg as she steps on to the sparse Tech Cube performance space, looking nervous and uncertain, like a twitchy actor at an audition. But this might be the most important performance of her life, she is about to meet her daughter.

So, she sits and practices different faces and words of greeting, twisting her face in anger and frustration as the exact phrasing and expression is never quite right. When her daughter does arrive she is almost speechless, her face crumples, it is the first time she has seen her now twelve-year-old daughter in a long, long time. The reason for the separation is not explained, but it is clear from the faultering tone that it is somehow the mother’s fault.

She gets to the crux of the issue, when she says, ‘I don’t know what version of events you’ve been told, but her are mine’.

Through a series of flashbacks, with nice light changes by Freya Game signalling the breaks in the timeline, we are gradually filled in with the details, although it is a somewhat drawn out affair, which does test the patience of the audience. The play, like the clever poster which advertises it, is the tale of a woman fractured into pieces by a society which pushes and pulls her in different directions. It is the story of an upcoming and already moderately successful actress, perhaps on the edge of greatness, who finds herself unsupported and unloved and left to bring up a young child on her own. Trying to hold down an office job, and attend auditions and embrace motherhood, with a child that only ever sleeps 30 minutes at a time. Lack of sleep becomes an illness, she implores to the watchers.

The story is hardly a new one and the structure never really allows you to get fully behind the protagonist. Having said that, it is not a play that says there are any simple answers either, that is very much left up to the audience to decide.

Its always nice to see the writer and the actress in such perfect alignment, but despite frankly brilliant acting by Ladenberg and a clever, wordy believable script by Swithinbank, there is simply not enough drama, or audience investment to propel this one to greatness.

Finishing with an invocation of Shakespeare at the close;

Let kite strings cutting sky fall all around

Let the Wind drop

Let the kite fall

Beautiful ending, but the thin audience in the third week of the Fringe tells it’s own story.

Reviewer: Greg Holstead

Reviewed: 22^nd August 2024

North West End UK Rating: