Cold Dark Matters is the story of a writer. Ostensibly, not the writer Jack Brownridge Kelly, but his strikingly similar Cornish character Colin.
Bearing a writer's heart involves existential pain as much as flames, moonshine and splinters
A dark satire performed at the Hope Theatre with murmurings from the downstairs pub adding to the ambience, Cold Dark Matters begins with Jack, the writer himself, instantly likeable in that jittery apologetic way of the English, as he prepares us for the lonely yarn he’s about to spin.
Told through an extended monologue with a few, well-played West Country voices for range, Cold Dark Matters, takes us on a rural writer’s retreat where a shed becomes a central and juicy metaphor for many of the play’s themes. The shed is a mundane thing, standing isolated with space only for one person, full of mysteries only accessible to the imagination. The shed is a metaphor for writing itself.
When Jack enters character, we lose the bumbling authenticity of Jack and gain the jarringly non-distinct perspective of Colin. With Colin as a buffer and the shed as our vocal point, it is easier for Jack to explicate the hopes and fears of an isolated writer seeking inspiration and community. But bearing a writer's heart is a rough process involving existential pain as much as flames, moonshine and splinters.
Though we are watching Colin, we are actually watching Jack stage his coldest, darkest matters. Tellingly, it is Jack who takes us to the play’s denouement, playing an anonymously sent audio file entitled ‘real ending’. This final snippet of truth in Jack’s tale brings about devastation, seeing our writer faced with an existential crisis that he tries to play off as ‘not real’.
The blasé ending, while whimsical, leaves us wanting. Jack seems to want to brush the play’s key themes of death and loneliness under the rug. Forget about it, Jack says, I made it up - it’s not real. In doing so, our attention is drawn to the art of story. We are left with the layered question of the story’s purpose: if Jack made it all made up, what, if anything, is real?
