Eight, Trafalgar Studios - theatre review
24-year-old writer-director Ella Hickson forges an intimacy between audience and character with a speed and depth to rival Alan Bennett in his Talking Heads
16 July 2009
Rating: 4/5
Fresh from a sell-out run in New York, this collection of monologues depicting Britain’s apathetic twenty-somethings won writer and director Ella Hickson a Fringe First award at Edinburgh last year. It’s easy to see why.
The 24-year-old Hickson forges an intimacy between audience and character with a speed and depth to rival Alan Bennett in his Talking Heads.
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This is partly down to the format (the audience chooses the four monologues it wants to hear from a selection of, you guessed it, eight), but also to Hickson’s sharp descriptive talent.
There is darkness: "I’m nothing because she’s everything", screams the obsessive Jude.
And there is comedy: for Astrid, sex with her boyfriend is, as for WB Yeats, "like putting a mussel into a slot machine".
Hickson and her brilliant cast will leave you desperate for the four monologues you missed.
To 25 July, Trafalgar Studios, 14 Whitehall, SW1, 0870 060 6632
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