Alison Peebles is a leading Scottish actor who once gave an acclaimed performance as Lady Macbeth and in many other memorable roles. But that’s not the point.
Alison has primary progressive MS which was first diagnosed 12 years ago, after a series of falls as a creeping numbness spread throughout her body. But maybe that’s not the point either. The point is that she is as vulnerable as all of us. Read more …
Thomas, Katie and Hanna are beautiful young performers, but it’s not important that they have healthy, flexible, reliable bodies. What’s important is that their minds and their emotions can be as unpredictable as Alison’s body.
My Shrinking Life is a confrontation between fundamental concepts in human life, between weakness and vanity, between choice and coercion, between movement and stasis, beginnings and ends.
Celebratory, irreverent and, at times, surreal, My Shrinking Life examines the emotional and physical journey we are all on as vulnerable, fragile people, diagnosed or not.
Peebles is on excellent form through all this, ranging from dry and ironic to belligerent and angry, and always too proud to ask for our sympathy.
It’s the presence of Peebles herself – maintaining fierce and playful eye contact with the audience, trying on the dazzling high heels she can no longer walk in – that forces us to face the central truth of the show.
If the production has the inconclusiveness of real life and an unevenness owing to its open-ended structure, it is also an honest, imaginative and singular response to an experience none of us would envy.
There are moments (when the talented, young supporting cast are not being given emotionally misfiring things to do) when the piece does succeed in creating a strong, deeply affecting connection with Peebles’s experience.
This is jump-cut, disordered, impressionistic; the very opposite of the consciousness-raising issue-based community piece. The ghastly practicalities, the patronising, the constant, grating offers of help, are almost thrown away in favour of a more existential approach.
The emotional effect of the performance showing the effects of, as used be said in Scotland, haein the feet cawed fae under ye, whether it be through illness like MS or some similar ordeal was greater than the overall impact of the production itself and the running time of 1 hour 40 minutes was quite long.
Despite being a fascinating, theatrically unusual and culturally important insight into a much evaded subject, there’s an uncertain and unfinished quality that niggles away in your mind. But then again, perhaps that’s ‘the point’.
Peebles herself is funny, honest and heartbreaking, her eyes steely and her gaze focused, railing against her body's unwillingness to do what her mind asks of it.
My Shrinking Life--Alison Peebles' MS-themed show
Alison Peebles rejects role of victim as MS sufferer takes to the stage for My Shrinking Life
Actress Alison Peebles: how I've dramatised my battle with MS
photo credit Andy RossByre Theatre, St Andrews from Thursday September 27, 2012, until Friday September 28, 2012. More info: www.byretheatre.com
Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh from Tuesday October 2, 2012, until Wednesday October 3, 2012. More info: www.traverse.co.uk
Eden Court Theatre, Inverness from Friday October 5, 2012, until Saturday October 6, 2012. More info: www.eden-court.co.uk
RSS feed of Theatre reviews