It’s a very impressive feat to stand up for an hour and talk about your own trauma and experiences in an engaging way that doesn’t feel like a Ted Talk. This is what Matty May has achieved with ‘If You Love Me This Might Hurt’.
We enter, and immediately it’s clear that this is a ‘safe space’, if you’ll excuse the hackneyed term. Bright coloured pieces of paper with odd words scrawled on them on the back wall, and a squishy armchair making up the set, it’s clear this isn’t going to be a dark affair of suicide and trauma. Except really, that’s exactly what it is.
We travel through Matty Mays thirty-something years with them, learning of their fears, insecurities, and most formative experiences, shaping and steering them towards the difficult choices they made when they were at the lowest points of their life. I hesitate to write about their very personal story, as it's not mine to share but will take my cue from May, who opened the show stating that they feel safe enough to talk about their own self-harm, so we should feel safe enough to watch. They share with us their three attempts to die by suicide.
I think Matty’s story is very important and powerful, however, it is a deeply personal story and from experience, it is very difficult to retell a story like this dramatically. With autobiographical pieces, there are moments that are important to us that might not translate to the audience, and conversely, the audience might be affected by moments that we the writer think are not as significant. May used the very brave tactic of checking in with the audience to make sure we were coping with the subject matter – I say brave because if just one of us, for some reason was not invested in or moved by the story, this pulls us away further. They are assuming that we are just as affected by their real-life as they were, and regardless of how valid their experiences are, you just cannot guarantee that everyone is moved. It borders on indulgence. Luckily, Matty’s charm and humility steer the piece safely away from the realms of indulgent.
My takeaway was the observations by May drawn from his experiences growing up, mainly that ‘no one is just one thing’. They touch upon many themes including their working-class background, being queer, exposure to aggressive men in their mother’s life, and these are all there to support the idea that we are all more than just one bad thing. At the top of the piece, they mentioned that they struggle with suppressing rage and anger as they are always presenting as the light, funny, Queer Matty. One thing I missed as an audience member and a critic, was this other side of them during the piece. A strong argument against one-person shows is that without multiple characters, is there enough conflict to move to action forward? I would have liked to have met the Matty that Matty themself battles within their darkest moments, so that we can see, rather than be told of their internal battle.
The design elements of the play contributed to the idea that this is a multifaceted person telling a layered story; with the lighting going from bold club lighting to a single lightbulb over the head of a hopeless May. Their journey was punctuated with painfully intrusive static and ringing in our ears, adding to the mounting pressure driving him to make these heart-breaking choices. And then suddenly there’s a lip-synch number of Annie Lennox’s ‘Why?’ to lighten to the load. The production mirrored this person on stage made of both light and dark.
I enjoyed this opening night of Matty Mays autobiographical piece, but the performance missed some distance between actor and character. I would like to have seen and felt more, rather than been told the story, but as mentioned before, the task of dramatizing your own experiences is not a simple one. Matty embraced the task with humour, sincerity, and a huge amount of love.
Review by Alex Wynter
Rating: ★★★
