St John’s College Auditorium

Friday 5th – Saturday 6th March; 7.30pm

“Acted with verve and dynamism, however, this is a generally excellent production. Thoughtfully staged and skilfully orchestrated, Tess Ellison’s direction draws out the pathos of the narratives, without sacrificing pace and energy.” Vicky Pearce ★★★★★

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Stoning Mary ★★★★★

Review by Vicky Pearce

Debbie Tucker Green’s Stoning Mary explores the interplay of three powerful African narratives. An HIV-positive couple battle over who will receive the single life-saving prescription of anti-retrovirals; two parents deal with the fallout of their abducted son becoming a child soldier, and a young woman awaits death by stoning in prison. The simple conceit of the play, however, is to transfer these narratives into the context of modern Britain. The all-white cast perform scenes of third world desolation within a setting of disorientating familiarly.

Tess Ellison’s minimalist production manages to capture the emotional intensity of many of the play’s compelling duologues. The fine cast, moreover, generally succeed in maintaining the essential rhythm of the play, inherent in its short, sharp lines of elliptical dialogue. The scenes between Adam Trepczynski and Rachel Dedman’s aids-ridden couple, and their respective egos (intriguingly acted as separate characters) are particularly impressive. Performed as a beautifully nuanced ensemble piece, such scenes present the heart-wrenching disintegration of a marriage amidst an appalling dilemma. At its best, this production achieves moments of exhilarating dramatic potency: Bess Roche’s Mary’s quiet devastation upon discovering that just twelve women signed a petition to save her life crescendos into an outraged invective against ‘the burn-their-bra bitches/The black bitches/the rootsical bitches/the white the brown bitches/the right-on bitches’, who have failed to practice what they preach. Her mercurial shifts between sullen reticence and violent anguish are a highlight of the production.

Unfortunately, the cast’s adoption of East End accents is somewhat patchy and inconsistent. I also wondered whether the rather forced voices restore the alienation of the characters that Tucker Green is trying to overcome through her transposition of their race and nationality. Such accents serve to distance what should be the shocking proximity of the characters to the audience.

Acted with verve and dynamism, however, this is a generally excellent production. Thoughtfully staged and skilfully orchestrated, Tess Ellison’s direction draws out the pathos of the narratives, without sacrificing pace and energy. The play at times becomes an extended poem: an eerie exploration of the foreign and the familiar, the relatable and the inconceivable.