We’ve all done it. You bump into a significant person unexpectedly and instead of saying what’s been on your mind, you blurt out nothing but inanities. Standing there in her Lycra shorts and tie-dyed top the day she comes face-to-face with her former abuser, Angelina Chudi’s Patricia could hardly look less in control of the conversation.
She manages a “Hi” and hates herself for it. But what exactly could she say? Martha Watson Allpress’s play is an attempt to articulate an experience that can’t be articulated. How to put into words the contradictory impulses, the emotional confusion, the anger and the hurt?
It would be so satisfying to deliver a perfectly judged speech, for Patricia to face the man who swept her off her feet before repeatedly assaulting her and, with each loaded word, make him feel the damage he had done. But what words could do that? And who could stay composed for long enough to say them?
Under the direction of Kaleya Baxe, Chudi is supremely attuned to the push-and-pull instincts of a script that refuses to simplify, to be neat and tidy, to apologise, to paint Patricia as just a victim. Rather, she is bold, funny (very funny) and sexually confident. And, yes, she also has doubts and times of despair.
But as the vitriol rises, so Chudi seems to grow before our eyes. Whether or not her assailant ever hears her out, Patricia finds her voice and stands tall. Chudi performs with tremendous emotional range, drawing us ever deeper into the dark heart of a play, written from the author’s experience, that sings with truth and is powered by political rage.
• At the Pleasance at EICC, Edinburgh, until 29 August
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