Small Things Theatre Company’s latest show is a lyrical and beautifully staged tale of love and loss. ‘Anything is Possible if You Think About it Hard Enough’, charts Alex and Rupert’s love story from the tender and clumsy meeting, courting, falling in love and eventual pregnancy.
Rupert, a self-confessed ‘numbers man’, a Mother’s boy, who says things like ‘twerp’ and fiddlesticks’ bumps into Alex, a self-possessed young woman armed with charming and witty one-liners. The synchronicity of their chance encounter on the underground reinforces Rupert’s belief and faith in the power of numbers and patterns, like geometry, an alignment out which there is order in the world. The slick and satisfying delivery would convince even the most cynical theatre-goer in this instance of the same.
Through Alex, writer Cordelia O’ Neil sensitively and poignantly explores the five stages of grief, as developed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, which became widely accepted in the 1960s. Alex clings, in denial, to the old and the familiar. In one painful scene, her pain and denial are so strong that she pretends that a pillow which she has stuffed up her dress, is their baby. She sits centre stage under a veil, a beautiful theatrical metaphor for the devastating isolation whilst in the crippling grips of depression. In her anger, she blames everyone else for the baby’s death. She bargains, as she talks to the baby whilst painting his nursery and at a certain moment, there’s some acceptance. Whilst the female experience of pregnancy and loss is well explored, so too is the mans. The helplessness, the need for solitude and of not knowing what to do, what to say or how to ask for what he wants. The performances (Alex played by Gemma Lawrence and Rupert played by Huw Parmenter) were electrifying, the dialogue swift, punchy, sharp and witty. Thanks to the direction by Kate Budgen, rarely is theatre as exciting or as crafted as this. The dialogue was thrown like punches in a boxing match, sometimes batted, strategically and smoothly like a tennis match and sometimes racing like a sprint, sometimes a Tango where neither and both led, the space between charged and kinetic as they interrupted each other’s thoughts, with witty one-liners. I was on the edge of my seat for 80 minutes. Suspended between hope, despair and pure joy.
The small thrust space, simply designed by Camilla Clarke, is likened to a Hockney painting with clean lines, bright and soft hues, with a background of paint swatches (the undecided colours of the nursery), was effective as they nimbly moved through their story. The courting scene, taking place with actors lodged behind the audience, either side of the stage, was likened to being Court-side at a Wimbledon match, where the players (the actors) made their moves, flirting strategically and for effect. ‘Magical Realism’, a term I’m borrowing from cinema, describes this plays genre. They transition in space and time, whilst maintaining a clear linear narrative line. The grace, ease and deft to how they do this, is largely down to Lucy Cullingford’s movement direction. The movement is integrated, gorgeous, appropriate and gracefully executed, as the actors guide us through the clumsiness, joy and devastation of their story. There’s nothing clumsy about the production itself. Its slickness manifest.
The company’s aim for this piece is “to help raise awareness of this so the bereaved feel supported. It will help remove the stigma and silence that surrounds the issue by encouraging people to start talking about it.”
This piece succeeds where so many shows fail. It explores an extremely difficult subject beautifully, sensitively and accurately. Made for theatre, its nonlinear physical storytelling, spitfire dialogue and unselfconscious performances is a gift to audiences. Go. Go. Go. Go!
Anything is Possible if You Think About it Hard Enough is playing at the Southwark Playhouse until the 9th October.
Review by Mandy Gordon
Rating: ★★★★★
Seat: B6 | Price of Ticket: £22 full, £18 concessions
