Let’s talk about violence. Or maybe not. Let’s just keep quiet, even though it trickles into all our lives; even though the threat and fear of it hums just beneath the surface of everyday existence.
So often, we turn the anger and frustration that we feel either on to those we love or in upon ourselves. It’s something explored in Stef Smith’s Swallow, and Barrel Organ come at it sideways in this follow-up to last year’s Nothing.
It is a story told in pieces, like the shards of a broken window pane. All we know is that there is a girl and a mother and a brother. The brother has been living with his lover abroad, but he’s coming home because the girl has broken into a house and been arrested. We never find out exactly what she’s done, but it might be more than breaking and entering.
The young woman barely talks, seldom leaves the house, and spends hours watching repeats of The Big Bang Theory, which she hates. She’s clearly depressed – though some say that the depressed are simply more realistic about the world and themselves. The mother’s helplessness and inability to reach her daughter manifest in an anger that seethes beneath her smiles.
One of the astonishing surprises about Nothing was the way it juggled content and form in such a distinctive and mature way for a young company. There are plenty of glimpses of that here too, but the use of games within the performance feels imposed rather than organic, as if the company saw and so loved Secret Theatre’s A Series of Increasingly Impossible Acts that they are borrowing from it rather than building on it.
No matter, this is fine work from a company getting that difficult second show under their belt and making something watchable and unsettling in the process.
- At Summerhall, Edinburgh, until 23 August. Box office: 0131-226 0000
