Solo shows are difficult enough to produce as it is without covering your main actor’s face in a veil and giving yourself forty five minutes to transport your audience into an alternative universe. However the real problem with this show is the way these challenges have been dealt with; Maggot has been mollycoddled.
The combined efforts of Villa and Beck exhibit incredible attention to detail, however they’ve overstepped the mark by overthinking this production
In the world of Greta Clough’s play there is one race. Katie Villa’s monologue is told by an unnamed character who has given birth a Caucasian baby – an anomaly in this world – and must decide between taking its life or losing hers. They call it a maggot to illustrate their world view that a Caucasian child is like an ugly parasite, and the mother must struggle between her instinctual feelings of disgust and maternity. The script suffers from excessive exposition, but Villa does her best to show us her story through her physicality or interaction with the set, not only tell it.
There are a couple of boxes and books on Cherry Truluck’s set for texture’s sake and nothing more, it would be more effective if it were left barren. Three light bulbs dangle onstage becoming signifiers for different things as the tale progresses, a simple prop utilised with brilliant dexterity. Villa is drawn to discover her history like a moth to a flame, and against a filmic, earthy soundscape the audience are propelled in and out of her consciousness.
The problem is that dream sequences are love letters to Freudian subtext and Maggot has three of them. Jessica Beck’s direction doesn’t embrace the in-yer-face nature of the Greta Clough’s text in these moments, and this safe approach means that the audience is left feeling a lot more awkward than they are shocked. The choreographed nature of Villa’s movement is too tense, echoing that the problem with this show is that the text hasn’t been given any room to breathe. Villa’s vocal performance however is brilliant, she shapes the text with an authority and empathy that’s essential to retaining this audience’s attention particularly as the visual means of expression are already hindered by her veil.
It isn’t for want of trying; the combined efforts of Villa and Beck exhibit incredible attention to detail, however they’ve overstepped the mark by overthinking this production. The production values of Maggot scream for critical analysis from the likes of drama students, but simply doesn’t shed any new light on the issues of race or maternity.
