Edinburgh Fringe 2024
The Elephant in the Room
POLYXO
Genre: Drama, New Writing, Theatre
Venue: C Arts Studio
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
The Elephant in the Room is a carefully considered relationship that falls so quickly from the pressures of internal jealousy, parental expectations and demands placed on the other to ‘become’ their everything. For Freya played by Faith Abongo, her expectation of love is far from the reality as she begins to normalise Dean’s (Temisanren Uwawah) behaviours – obsessive, compulsive and suffocating. So much so that the ambitious fearless woman at the start feels like a distant memory to her absent family and University friends. What went wrong here? This piece carefully exposes the signs of a turbulent relationship that is damaged beyond repair – realistically portrayed, with segments of poetic form to give an insight into the characters’ ambitions and regrets.
Please note, this piece does explore themes of domestic violence, domestic abuse.
Review
When entering the studio, you feel a sense that you are imposing on a relationship here – a great sense of being a fly on the wall in a very complex and intimate relationship – the tale of Freya and Dean. However, this story isn’t a fairytale – it may begin this way but essentially, the initial attraction began with hesitation on both sides – with Freya feeling her next relationship should fit her social constructs and the demands/expectations placed on her from her parents; the father in particular. Dean seems up for the challenge and seeks to prove his ‘worth’ despite feeling in Freya’s shadow from the beginning. We feel this. What is lovely here is the writing by Faith Abongo – to incorporate asides for the characters to divulge their deepest insecurities, breaking up the realistic action placed on stage. So this becomes more of an educational set up, in swift episodic scenes, following the lovers story as their lives begin to change in the blink of an eye.
Abongo and Uwawah get a great balance between demonstrating the ‘signs’ of controlling behaviour that an abuser can embody – taking away autonomy from their partner, controlling their devices and finally the space and circles of people they surround themselves with. Both actors perform these roles with a real sense of vulnerability, raw conversations that do not feel over exaggerated but truthful. With topics of this nature it is so common to see a text book portrayal of an abusive partner, however this show goes deeper than that – with moving soliloquies that will help you to understand the actioning and the repetition of the dependency and the violence. You will feel a sense of unease, that we are always watching – you will feel immersed in their world, to really witness a relationship behind the scenes in the privacy of their own home.
This is an educational, hard-hitting piece that allows you to understand the subtle stages of a relationship that is toxic – this is a condescend version of a longer edit for the Edinburgh Fringe that chooses to focus mainly on the home and world the characters create together. At times, it would be great to see more of the honeymoon period to understand further the characters initially interest in the other – to offer a bit more light in the darkness, if this was the intention? You can expect some tender physical theatre moments that are a visceral interpretation of the lovers care for each other, that hold the scene beautifully in moments when the characters directly address the audience – this offers a metaphorical language of the relationship that presents itself in the present, past and future.
Both actors give a performance of grit, vulnerability and offer the perspective of two sides to the story, go along to watch how the action plays out as they address the elephant in the room, which is indeed the ugly trajectory of a domestically violent relationship. Will Freya get the will to leave or will she continue to stand by her partner Dean will her world slowly crumbles? This is a compelling story of both characters losing their sense of self, family and identity, which feel hauntingly believable in tackling a growing concern that we see every day or read as new static in the newspaper. It’s important to keep the dialogue going and reach out to people like Freya who you see may be changing or falling behind. Congratulations to cast and creative team for executing a challenging subject matter that succeeds in showing the sour undercurrent of a fabricated love story.
