Jenna Fincken’s one-woman play anatomises a relationship as it spirals into coercive control, from the first day to the last. A countdown in the backdrop logs the relationship’s sequence: 824 days to go, 459 days to go, and so on. We do not know if it is counting down to escape – or otherwise – and the guessing game builds a potent tension.
Lou, a primary school teacher, describes Ryan as “disgustingly nice” on first meeting him: he takes her to an expensive restaurant and looks for a house by the sea when she speaks of it as her dream. Once there, he isolates and controls.
Written and disarmingly performed by Fincken, Ruckus shows how an independent young woman can end up in a relationship that strips her of almost all autonomy. In a production directed by Georgia Green for Wildcard, and inspired by real stories, Fincken’s movements are playful at the start but turn jagged with frustration and fear.
The story moves towards psychological control by inches so that, like Lou, we do not see the wheels moving at first. Tingying Dong’s suspenseful sound design amplifies the tension as chilling detail creeps in – the cleaning regime Ryan imposes at home and how he tracks her movements through an app. Ultimately, he comes to decide what she wears and where she goes. “I don’t think I will meet someone who loves me as much as Ryan loves me and hates me as much as Ryan hates me,” says Lou.
In another appalling moment, Lou’s colleague speaks of an abused mother who has been placed in a refuge as a passive facilitator of her abuse; it is “like a person has a fire in the kitchen and they refuse to put it out,” she says. Those words seem to hang over Lou, as if she is seeing herself judged in the same way.
In her most desperate moments, she plans escape but rounds back on the bleak fact that he would find her. And, she thinks, if physical violence has not occurred, what exactly can she tell the police? This is a stark but important play which takes us inside the head, and life, of a trapped woman.
At Southwark Playhouse, London, until 29 October.
