This is Living

by Liam Borrett

seen at the Trafalgar Studios Two on 6 June 2016

Yet another short intense play, although this production is lengthened by having an interval. Liam Borrett directs Michael Socha as Michael and Tamia Kari as Alice in his own play about coming to terms with devastating loss. Sarah Beaton designed the extraordinary set; the acting space is a sheet of black plastic raised on a small dais, and covered with a thin film of water.

Michael is cradling Alice at the beginning, water seeping into their clothes. Alice is totally unresponsive at first, then chokes out a mouthful of water and behaves as if awaking after a party binge. Flashbacks show the couple's courtship and the strain of Alice's miscarriage, then their delight in having a little girl. But all the while, the question is pressing - is Michael dreaming all this? How will he allow himself to let Alice go? Or are we also witnessing Alice's gradual acceptance of the situation she must confront?

The structure of the play demands considerable technical skill from the actors - just as in Incognito (seen in New York in May) highly emotional scenes are begun and ended with changes of lighting, and the succeeding scene may have a completely different emotional tenor. Both Michael Socha and Tamia Kari rise to the challenge with great accomplishment. There is a particularly moving scene when Michael talks to his long-dead mother, in very subdued light with his back to the audience, his voice choked with tears; but moments later we are at another stage of the story and there is no trace of distress.

Curious that the last play I saw in this studio theatre had a very similar theme (see the review for Boa from March 2015, which has almost identical comments about structure and acting skill), though the couple concerned was much older. But the subject can be examined in many ways, and This is Living was well worth seeing. It is particularly encouraging to see young actors so well able to handle the challenges thrown at them by this style of play.