One woman show. These three words are often enough to scare me away from a theatre- because, really, can one actor or actress ever carry the weight of a whole show successfully by themselves? I am delighted to say that, yes, Hand Over Fist’s lead, Joanna Bending, has proved that you can.
Bending’s character Emily is a self-professed ‘fruitcake’, an old woman struggling to recount the story of when she first met the love of her life. However, this is not a love story. If you are looking for something straightforward and easy to follow don’t go to the Pleasance Courtyard for this one. For Emily is a sufferer of Alzheimer’s and her struggle to tell the audience her story jumps between the present, the past, and fantasy in her attempt to find the truth in her memories.
This could leave you in complete confusion over what on earth is going on if it wasn’t for Bending’s excellent performance. As she leaps between the voices of the story’s various characters, the enthusiasm and relentless pace of her voice also begins to develop the voice of the ageing Emily, who is falling fast into dementia’s prison. Emily’s imagination inflates her own memories and fantasies until they are out of control, but Bending manages to distinguish between illusions and reality thanks to the tone of her flyaway, breathy voice. The meandering script must have been a great challenge for director Hannah Eidinow to work with; she manages to make the narrator’s jumps through time clearer through projected images that bring the audience back to the moments Emily is reminiscing about. There are plenty of jokes fluidly running through Emily’s stories that drew laughs from the audience. However, there are some moments when the level of melodrama is so high that the audience wasn’t sure whether they should be laughing or crying, and so did neither. That being said, there was a moment of genuine emotion and tears at the end of the performance, which gave this gushing and confusing play its underlying meaning, thus making it a worthwhile watch.
