Is it possible for us to understand someone else’s pain, to really feel how they do? Director Rachel Bagshaw tries to do just that in this unique, disconcerting and always compelling show. Put together with care and intelligence by Bagshaw and writer Chris Thorpe, it becomes an unexpected thing of beauty. There are times when the sound composition and design (by Melanie Wilson) and the video and lighting design (by Joshua Pharo) collide in such intense and surprising ways that it feels as if we are immersed in pain itself.
Since she was 19, Bagshaw has lived with complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS), a condition still not really understood by doctors. Bagshaw doesn’t just feel her pain: she sees it as colours and shapes (such as a dirty red rectangle), and sometimes experiences it as sounds. She suffers from intense discomfort, sometimes all day. A touch to her left arm can set it off in her right limb. Pain is part of her, just like having red hair or freckles.
But does it define her? When she starts a relationship, even though she is suspicious of those who “pick up injured animals”, she knows that pain will be a third partner.
One of the many things that makes this show so fascinating is the way the specific relationships between Bagshaw and her pain, and Bagshaw and her lover, have a more universal resonance. We all want desperately to be understood but sometimes we find it impossible to explain ourselves. As Bagshaw does, we start demanding telepathy from our partners. We stop noticing the other person’s distress and pain. We fall prey to the loneliness that creeps up, corrodes and isolates when we realise we are essentially alone. Nobody else in the world knows what it feels like to be us.
What could have been dry and earnest is instead funny and sad and wise, not least because of a totally open and winning performance from Hannah McPake who plays Bagshaw without a hint of sentimentality. This is an exercise in empathy – and it is exhilarating theatre.
- At Summerhall, Edinburgh, until 26 August. Box office: 0131-560 1581.
