By: Grant Moxom

Grant Moxom — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 06:41:39 +0000

I hadn’t thought about that – I truly didn’t connect to the characters/performers – I felt they were in a different world to me – and felt that they were not important. On looking back at this – that’s a shocking thing! I wasn’t interested in watching – I couldn’t make myself care for the woman being beaten regularly, it all felt unreal “This could never happen to me”. I’ve always been attracted to theatre that draws on the quiet assumption at the back of the head that says “I’m safe, because none of this is real” – then transposes that to “I’m safe because this wouldn’t happen to me” and then hits one further note where the characters echo the words whispering in the back of our heads. It’s horrifying to realise that these characters are actually exactly the same as us.
I think this production just missed out on the last part – perhaps the clipped nature of the language – But I think it’s interesting to remember that the effect of this language is to simulate a feeling of disinterest – Can this be broken by a change? What would happen if this short, sharp overlapping dialogue turned into simple “natural” speech, if in the moment it changes we are finally brought to care about these characters, to empathise, to hope for – only to realise it is too late and the events which we blindly ignored have destroyed them utterly, and all that is left is the gut-wrenching knowledge that everything has irreversibly changed, or, as the poets say “We’re all fucked”

Comments on: Dirty Butterfly | Flour Sugar Tea, Arts Radar, B-Sharp

By: Grant Moxom