Giving Up The Ghosts

Image supplied by Blue Room Theatre.

A woman waits, silently, anxiously, in a night punctuated by varying shades of darkness as she moves around under trees. The night’s noises are muted, the humming quiet raising the audience’s awareness of the lack of nearby movement, strain showing on the face of the sole figure, waiting. Just as the wait becomes unbearable, the sound of a vehicle arriving triggers alarm and relief in equal measure for the woman. A man strides purposefully towards her. 

The ensuing conversation is stilted and awkward, stretches of strained silence broken by overlapping words. The audience’s close attention is rewarded by the gradual realisation as to the nature of this rendezvous, arranged on the internet the previous night. Steve and Ruth reveal much through their inability to communicate with each other: finding each other’s true motivations, each learning more about their own self than each other in the wait through the night.

Georgia King as Ruth is difficult to watch, her depiction of a broken soul is so brutally crushing. King takes none of the ego of her polished professional actor-self on to this stage, but only the controlled talent and skill that allows her to discard her natural attractive charisma to bring Ruth’s shattered self to awkward life. Paul Grabovac’s Steve is an earthy, easy-going foil to Ruth’s despair, helping her to understand herself and offering her a way out and a better future, only to find how damaged this stranger really is. This is an acting challenge of a different nature, but finely judged to convey the full impact of Sarah Young’s deliberately sparsely-written script. The balance between the two characters is sustained by Joe Lui’s sensitive direction.

The technical aspects of sound, lighting and set are all finely tuned, with exactly as little as there needs to be. The constant humming keeps the audience on edge, guessing what will happen next. The actual car would be a distracting centrepiece on the stage – replacing it with two shabby car seats leaves much more scope for the dramatic constructions of the actors. The painted tree, with its roots and leaves reaching into the performance space, the stars painted across the walls and the arch of the abandoned tractor factory are all minimal enough to fade into the background but defined enough to play their parts as required. Lighting is consistent, not grabbing the attention but subtly taking the events through the late night and on through to pre-dawn, giving King, in particular, strong support in her portrayal of crippling anxiety.

Giving Up The Ghosts is quite different from previous work presented by King, Grabovac and Lui, and demonstrates the depth and breadth of creativity they have to offer.