Rika’s Rooms – The Playground Theatre
The world premiere of Gail Louw’s Rika’s Rooms is adapted from the playwright’s novel of the same name and based on the real-life experiences of her late mother’s childhood flight from Nazi Germany, uneasy teenage settlement in Israel, marriage and immigration to apartheid South Africa, and eventual deterioration and disintegration living with dementia in England. Despite the weighty nature both of the story itself and the delivery method of its storytelling, this harrowing one woman show is suffused with love and light.
Emma Wilkinson Wright is a revelation as Rika, where many a singular actor might seem overburdened and stoop under the heft of so dense a series of monologues, she acts with a potent naturalism, ruthlessly efficient in both vocal and physical transformation to the point...