As might be expected in Jane William’s ambitious work,
With openness and honesty, Williams has created an intriguing juxtaposition of her own life with Eliot’s controversial poem
No one can pretend that Eliot makes for easy reading, replete as it is with academic allusions and literary and religious references, yet setting that aside there is much with which to identify personally. What Williams does is to relate the work to her own life, to see it as a source of dark humour that becomes an emotional release and a means of confronting the complexities of mental disarray. Hence she cleverly weaves the trials and tribulations of her own life into passages from Eliot’s poem that seem relevant to her condition and interprets it in a wider context.
Her performance is a journey of heartfelt mental health experiences that change like the weather and can move with the seasons. As Eliot pointed out, April might be cruel, winter full of contradictions, just as the freezing snow keeps the earth beneath it warm and protected, and summer might be full of surprises. In the same way that there is no escape from those external forces, so the workings of the mind cannot be avoided, only accommodated. The high must be appreciated and the lows endured. Medicines can provide some relief but not a permanent solution. Temporary amelioration is always tinged with knowing that the storm clouds will again gather and that a sudden clap of mental thunder will destroy the mind's stability.
Williams was assisted in creating What the Thunder Said by dramaturg Di Sherlock who helped to weave the worlds together through text and sound. Working collaboratively, with openness and honesty, they created an intriguing juxtaposition of Williams' own life with Eliot’s controversial poem, which he completed while recovering from a nervous breakdown. Together they have drawn attention to the lack of fulfilment and meaning people can experience, combined with a feeling of entrapment in a routine mechanical world, like that of The Typist in the Fire Sermon.
There is no certainty of a way out of such a life but there is hope during times of respite that Shantih, the peace that passes understanding, might be achieved or perhaps just be glimpsed at, even if through a pair of yellow sunglasses.
