Edinburgh Fringe 2025
Low Down
Sabra Boyd goes to the Bank of America to cash a cheque. It is her pay cheque, and she wants to get the cash to pay her father’s IRS bill. Just why an 18-year-old is saddled with that debt is then told in confessional style to teller and manager who got more than they bargained for when they asked why.
Review
This is a fascinating tale wrapped up in a conceit that doesn’t quite match the story. Boyd is in a rush and yet she volunteers information without being asked for detail which seems strange for anyone to be in a rush and yet want to tell all to a stranger. Whatever the appointment is that she is late for, it aint going to be achieved.
I was also wanting more of the trafficking detail which was unavailable in a bank conversation. Perhaps taken into a side room would have been a directorial choice that could have opened up more discursive opportunities.
The ensuing requests for her address begins a diversion into being trafficked by her father, her identity being stolen by him and ending ups as the CEO of a company at the age of five. It all seems fantastical and yet this confident young lady has us wrapped up in her storytelling. It sounds believable because it is based on fact. Stranger than fiction? Perhaps.
And it is the fictional part, the conceit that doesn’t serve it well. Not that it is the bank as a backdrop, but the need for another voice, more interaction with the disembodied voice. It does not need the bank officials to be incredulous but more questioning. That would aid us, as an audience, in hearing the very obvious questions with which we are struggling as we hear the tale. It does not need another presence onstage as Boyd is able to hold that stage with impeccable timing and great skill.
Technically there are few cues and the disembodied voice of the bank officials works well enough, whilst the costume and explanation of the massive backpack dates it well.
The hope expressed was that this would highlight trafficking and it certainly opened up the debate. With more of the detail of what trafficking is and the horror of being trafficked – for whatever reason – especially as a child – would have added to the imperative need for a such a debate and here it was not quite as effective as it could have been. Nonetheless this did not take liberties with the experience, nor sensationalise which meant it handled the beginning of the debate appropriately.
