Depression and other mental illnesses are often unfairly ignored in our society. They’re complex, different in every presentation, hard to know how to deal with. Thus they often get shunted to one side in favour of more tangible enemies. Kiss Me… is a big middle finger up to that kind of attitude, to those ‘grey areas’ as the main character puts it. It’s a fiery, outspoken work that reminds us how rewarding theatre can be when it addresses the subjects we find hardest to talk about.
The play offers a glimpse into the lives of four troubled young people: Alex, her on/off boyfriend James, her best friend Cleo, and Cleo’s younger brother Christopher, all of them struggling with mental baggage. Playwright Eva O’Connor stars as Alex, a severely depressed young woman who has relented to the tide of prescription pills forced onto her. The play opens on Alex as she cakes herself in makeup and speaks venomously of ‘joining Sylvia’ (Plath, from whose writing the title derives). O’Connor sells every acidic syllable, every contemptuous flick of the hair, and her wonderful deadpan delivery keeps things grounded when the script occasionally tips ever-so-slightly towards the melodramatic. While her Alex is a treat to watch, it isn’t until the remaining three cast members join her on stage that the play opens up and director Sophie Fuller gets a chance to flex her muscles. The script doesn’t so much play with the fourth wall as just ignore it, and it really does work. Characters address the audience as and when they want, and Alex even berates us for our ghoulish voyeurism, making a very clever and on-the-nose reference to the reality television. There are dance and physical sequences too, the first of which admittedly succeeds rather more than the second.
Rob Neumark-Jones plays James, a misanthropic mess of a man whose only real emotional response is anger. Though the script never spells out the precise nature of James’s problems, his disdain for all those around him builds a picture of someone with a severe sociopathic streak. Neumark-Jones is consistently excellent and, after something quite unexpected gives us a glimpse of why James is the way he is, he handles the emotional change adeptly. As the autistic Christopher, Daniel Cummins is simply wonderful, giving a committed performance that creates the play’s most endearing character. It’s a shame we don’t get to learn as much about Elspeth McKeever’s Cleo, because the little we do get is rather interesting. Likely a casualty of the brutal Fringe timeslots.
Anyone who loves to see fresh original theatre: go and see Kiss Me. The writing is blackly superb, the direction smart, and the acting outstanding. It’s not perfect (what is?), but it tackles a difficult subject matter with intelligence and dignity, and that alone is worth the price of a ticket.
