Death of the Unicorn

Death of the Unicorn is a hodge-podge of a play. Existentialism clashes with childish excitement as Wet Concrete Theatre romp their way through a little girl’s active imagination, explore how she grows into a young person conditioned by education and rationality and show how she makes the ultimate sacrifice to regain visionary status. Though the company injects boundless energy into the piece, it ultimately seems ludicrous. It is difficult to follow - sometimes inexplicable - and the script is often absurd.The play starts with the image of a blindfolded woman in patchwork dungarees sitting next to a breathing mass of bodies. Suddenly the mass reveals an actor in brighter dungarees, and we soon find that the two women are the same, presented at different times in their life: the young girl wears the bright dungarees and the older the duller. So far, so clear. But as the show’s parabola unfolds (we end with the beginning) things get confused. We see the actors creating the sea or a wood with their bodies and cloths; there is a lot of childish screaming; suddenly we enter faux poetic discussions of something about ‘the fated burning of romanticism’ or the ‘leaf of femininity’. It makes one wonder who this is for. Children might like seeing a growing child presented, and enjoy the company’s physicality throughout - as well as the ordering of the audience to draw their house on pieces of paper at one point. But children would be completely at a loss when things got all existential-y. As a young adult, I find the show’s portrayal of childhood trite, and the “existentialism” pompous. It just doesn’t add up.The acting is varied. Jessica Chamberlain and Stephanie Roberts, as the older and younger girl respectively are sometimes effective, but they seem to lack conviction in what they are saying - perhaps because it doesn’t make much sense. The chorus (Lydia Hourihan, Mimi Findlay and Paul Burges) are strong at points - their most effective creation is the all-arms-folded, pointing persona of the little girl’s strict teacher. At other times, I can’t really tell what they are meant to be representing.I think Death of a Unicorn’s concept lets the actors down here, rather than vice versa. The show feels strange and confused by itself. The final lines are symptomatic of the half-baked production. We are told to always keep in mind the ‘everlasting sea of inspiration’, and to take a paintbrush on the way out (presumably for codifying such inspiration). As far as I saw, there weren’t any paintbrushes.