Edinburgh Fringe 2024
How I Learned to Swim
Paines Plough
Genre: Drama, New Writing, Solo Show
Venue: Roundabout at Summerhall
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
World premier of a award nominated new play which explores what grief, fear and resilience are for a young black woman who is scared of the water. Playwright Somebody Jones received a Paines Plough Playwright Fellowship 2023 and was a Women’s Prize Finalist 2021 with this play. Directed by Emma Jude Harris (Revenge:After The Levoyah highly acclaimed in the fringe 2024).
Review
Having a World Premier of your first play staged in the Roundabout by Paines Plough is a great achievement and Somebody Jones’ play How I Learned to Swim is worthy of all the attention and award nomination.
This solo show, performed by Frankie Hart, is about a young black woman Jamie and her drive to learn to swim aged 30, and what has stopped her (and other black people) getting in the water up til now. Through a series of deft character sketches we meet the key people in Jamie’s life from the pool party school bully, to the weed puffing fake mystic and most importantly Molly, the charismatic pool instructor. Hart is by turns naive, overbearing, cynical and funny as she portrays Jamie’s encounters with family, friends and foes. The drama calls for a lot of physical movement on and around the clever pool-themed set (Debbie Duru) and director Emma Jude Harris has choreographed Hart with precision and elegance; we always know where we are and who we are with.
Jones’ words and word play are lyrically and mostly effortless in their liquidity. There are a handful of moments on a trip to Haiti which are perhaps unnecessarily complicated and the resolution with the unexpected helping hand is a little too cute. However the blending of the text with Nicola T Chang’s sublime soundscape is a joy, underscoring the story telling beautifully. The lighting design, sadly uncredited, is pretty special too.
On TV, film or stage we engage with dramas which make us think or make us feel and although this is a beautiful piece of theatre it needs more urgency and foreboding, we need to feel the pull of the dangerous current, the undertow pulling Jamie under. This is a great first play from a rising new talent and if you don’t catch it in Edinburgh then its next showing is at Bristol Old Vic.
