by Luisa De la Concha Montes
Loosely tailored from the unique Greek fantasy of Persephone, this play co-written by Ami Sayers, Abi Smith and Mollie Semple is a inventive exploration of Queerness. From the beginning, the play is enjoyable and fascinating, opening up with a fast-paced tune and a coordinated stunt that reveals the three main characters, Persephone and her two buddies, preparing for the day, brushing their tooth and driving the bus to highschool collectively.
The stage is bustling with life, with pink and purple lights, and vegetation and flowers draping from the desk, chairs and couch. Nonetheless, opposite to the expectations this may increasingly create, the play doesn’t have a cheerful plot. Shortly sufficient, we realise that Persephone has grown right into a quiet younger girl who is continually bullied by those who have been her buddies throughout childhood.
We begin studying about Persephone’s needs and fears via the graceful navigation between her desires and actuality. Her needs manifest within the form of Hades, a non-binary character that continually seems in her desires, gently seducing her with muffins and candy treats. Hades describes themselves as “not a boy or a woman, a little bit of each” with a mischievous smile paying homage to Shakespeare’s Puck. The connection between Hades and Persephone is the largest distinction with the unique Greek fantasy. Not like the parable, abduction will not be even a part of the story. As an alternative, Hades is portrayed as candy and tender, and their relationship is grounded in consent.
Furthermore, the chemistry between each characters, portrayed by actors Charlotte Webb (Hades) and Mollie Semple (Persephone), is extraordinarily mesmerising and sensual. In a single scene, Persephone delivers a monologue, describing every thing she desires to do to Hades, with no hesitation. The language is charged with sexual tones, mixing concepts of bodily want with poetic connotations about nature. This creates a scene that’s each stunning and electrifying.
Persephone’s fears manifest via her mom, a middle-aged girl who has misplaced her magnificence
and with it, her perceived goal in life. She is absent from Persephone’s life, continually ignoring her requests for consideration, and feeling jealous of Persephone’s magnificence and youth. Their relationship is successfully used to discover feminist concepts of physique picture, the male-gaze and sexuality. As an illustration, in a single placing scene, Persephone’s mum tells her she ought to benefit from the lascivious stares of unusual males on the road, as they “received’t final endlessly” and she is going to “miss them once they don’t have a look at her anymore”. Persephone replies to her in anger, explaining how she by no means desires to be checked out like that ever once more. The one situation with this dynamic is that the portrayal of Persephone’s mum as working class is a bit problematic. It reproduces unfavourable stereotypes, when in actuality the self-sexualisation in ladies is current in all socioeconomic backgrounds.
Regardless of this, the play successfully makes use of mysticism to inform a coming-of-age story in a brand new mild. The characters, who masterfully swap between their ‘real-life’ variations and the Greek mythological variations, convey to life an explosive narrative, bustling with colors and life. The sound design creates clear-cut cues that transport us backwards and forwards between the Underworld and Earth, constructing a fictional world that curiously inspects the hyperlinks between id, household bonds and gender.
Persephone ran via 21 Could.
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