Brace Brace, Royal Court Theatre Review
Brace Brace production image. Photo by Helen Murray
Reviewed by Charlotte for Theatre and Tonic
Disclaimer: Gifted tickets in exchange for an honest review
A plane fell out of the sky, and I just happened to be on it. So goes the chilling mantra in Oli Forsythe’s newest play Brace Brace playing its premiere run at the Royal Court Jerwood Upstairs. Sylvia and Ray are a married couple telling the story of the harrowing flight to their honeymoon - or rather, using storytelling as a battlefield as their coping mechanisms begin to drive a wedge between them. While they have survived a flight which was hijacked, a flight which they only survived because Sylvia chose to fight, now they have to survive the people they have become in its aftermath.
The sense of danger in Brace Brace is immediate, the intimate Jerwood Upstairs transformed by a gaping hole in the floor, a sharp-edged walkway emerging steeply from it, and flickering seatback screens embedded in the walls. The background hum of plane engines greets you as you take your seat, and even as Sylvia and Ray jokingly reenact their first encounter at a university party, long before the fateful flight that will change them both forever, the slim space between them, the audience, and the void in the floor gives a treacherous undercurrent to every step they take.
Indeed, the technical mastery of the space is what gives Brace Brace such a cutting atmosphere of unease. Even with the foreboding tone that hangs over every word spoken, when the scene or terror arrives, it is beyond anticipation–nothing short of a feat of theatrical design. The line between spectator and passenger is disturbingly blurred, and time seems to slow. It’s as mesmerising as it is unsettling – something so visceral you cannot tear your eyes away from it for even a moment. And though I won’t rob anyone of the experience by describing more here, suffice it to say that designers Anna Reid, Simeon Miller, and Paul Arditti are vital to the impact of this bold production.
That said, Brace Brace is far from reliant on spectacle. Beneath the plane falling out of the sky are two people coping with being back on the ground. Forsythe’s characters are written with such roundness and specificity they feel almost impossibly real as they wield the audience in their disjointed attempt to make sense of their experience. As Sylvia and Ray draw the audience ever more into their faltering approaches to coping, the atmosphere of paranoia grows so thick it is almost tangible, a character of its own. That, truly, is the chilling kernel that lies at the centre of the play–there is no closure or inspirational overcoming, only ordinary people wading in the wake of unimaginable trauma.
Anjana Vasan is magnetic as Sylvia, equal parts charmingly funny and disturbingly raw as she journeys through Sylva’s obsession with revisiting every second of the disaster. Phil Dunster is likewise both sympathetic and shocking as Ray, a man desperate to move forward but unwilling to face his own anger over what happened tens of thousands of feet in the air. As simply ‘The Man,’ Craige Els rounds out the cast perfectly, a dark specter over the couple’s fracturing relationship, a shadow behind every doorway.
Brace Brace could well be classified as a piece of stage horror. It is a visceral experience from start to finish, yet it achieves its adrenaline-inducing air in a way that is neither gratuitous nor meaningless. In tapping into some of our deepest fears and staring into their gritty aftermath, Forsythe’s drama looks at post-traumatic response in a new light, leaning into the darkest cracks of what the mind loses when it’s forced to act in the shortest of seconds and daring to offer no neat resolutions to such darkness. While perhaps not for the faint of heart, Brace Brace is a singular piece of theatre undoubtedly worth experiencing.
At Royal Court Theatre until 9 November 2024.
☆☆☆☆☆
