What I’d Be at Brockley Jack Studio Theatre Review
Written by Penny for Theatre and Tonic
Disclaimer: Gifted tickets in return for an honest review
Tanieth Kerr’s play is about two estranged sisters, reunited in the small town where they grew up, after ten years apart. Their lives have taken very different paths. Makayla has made a success of herself and has not been home, Ally hasn’t left since she dropped out of University, her youthful creativity dampened by mundane reality.
The idea of siblings reuniting to face the ghosts of their past has a lot of potential. Unfortunately this two-hander does not live up to it. A combination of poor writing and muted performances results in a story that doesn’t feel as if it needed to be told.
As the play begins, the two sisters meet on a bench. Mikayla is about to leave for university, younger sister Ally is busy scribbling ideas down on scraps of paper, napkins, anything she can get her hands on. She’s full of ideas and strong, unshakable beliefs, very disapproving of her big sister’s smoking. For some reason this first encounter is accompanied by a pulsing rhythm. It’s rather distracting.
Fast forward ten years, via a projected photo and video montage that underlines the sisters’ close relationship before showing their growing rift, through a series of voicemail messages. It’s a good idea but doesn’t quite work as the characters are not yet well enough established for it to be clear as to which sister is trying to maintain contact whilst the other ignores her attempts.
The bulk of the 65 minutes focuses on Mikayla and Ally as adults, running into each other on the park bench of their teenage years. Ally has just been to their mother’s funeral, Mikayla is there “by chance” as she was apparently in the area for a business meeting. There’s early tension between the two but their meeting quickly becomes frustrating as there is too much focus on their current grievances rather than the mother whose behaviour ultimately drove them apart. Parts of Kerr’s script, which no doubt looked good on paper, don’t make much sense in performance. Mother is compared to a “black hole of self esteem”, Ally says her big sister was the best gift her mother gave her (surely this should be the other way round?) and Mikayla’s main grievance against this monster of a mother seems to be that she always called her Kay, thereby showing her lack of love through a disregard for the rest of the syllables in her daughter’s given name.
The direction from Katy Livsey is a little inconsistent. The opening scene does well to show a strong sibling relationship with physical closeness and a light and relaxed delivery. This closeness is then clearly absent between the sisters as adults, effectively done, and the direction of their physical performances does well to show us tentative steps towards rebuilding the earlier bond. But it’s rather jarring when this growing intimacy collapses when an emotional confession is delivered directly to the audience, breaking eye contact and any connection between the two women. There’s no real light and shade – seemingly normal conversation suddenly switches to a shouted outburst, without any build up.
Rachel Jones plays Makayla and does well to show the mask of self assurance slipping away as she faces her demons and appears to physically shrink before us. By contrast, Beth BIrss, first established as the flaky and directionless child, shows us a young woman growing in confidence and presence as she becomes the adult in the pair, offering comfort and forgiveness. But, despite confident physical performances, both women are generally very quiet in their delivery, a lot of their dialogue is mumbled, meaning the crucial back story to the toxic mother’s impact on their lives is lost. It feels improvised in places and there’s some repetition as if stumbling for lines.
What I’d Be is a strong idea that needs a lot more development if it is to become a strong piece of theatre. It could do with more subtlety in direction and clarity in diction. Less focus on phone chargers and more on the charged relationship and past experiences of its characters.
What I’d Be runs at the Jack Studio Theatre until Saturday 21st February. Find out more and book here.
★★