Trigger Warning: violence, abuse, sexual assault and death
“A harrowing story of abhorrent violence, the girl behind it and life afterwards”
Hard to watch at times, this tragic tale touches upon the themes of guilt, growth, grief and redemption. This thought-provoking watch explores a horrific act of violence from both the perpetrators side and the victims and questions the human species capacity to forgive and change.
The play starts in Glasgow in 2006, with two school girls Zoe (Caitlin Fielding), sweet and calm, and Kay (Abigail Hood), feisty and funny. The two girls discuss Kay’s outrageous antics of the day and the school bullies who torment Zoe and Kay torments in turn. Through multiple scenes with these two characters we see them and their beautiful friendship come to life, through witty dialog and loving gestures. The two girls fantasize about running off to the Isle of Muck together and living happily ever after riding the wild horses, being savages, eating carrots and digging holes if it rains (you hear this a few times – it’s catchy). This friendship blossoms into something more as these scenes go on. However, constantly underlying these scenes is a sense of foreboding that something isn’t right. There are multiple mentions of Kay’s erratic violent behaviour and hints at her horrible home life.
This comes to the forefront in a scene between Kay and her pregnant teacher Mrs Rebecca Hastie (Emma Keele), they aren’t supposed to be alone as Kay bit Rebecca last time (she is at least living up to the savage part of her dream). Rebecca doesn’t pay these warnings any heed however as she senses that something is going awfully wrong in Kay’s life and wants to help. Rebecca points out a bruise on Kay’s face and tells her that she didn’t press charges for the incident last time as she knows that Kay was upset and scared and she knows how it feels to be that way. Kay however doesn’t open up and they play moves on.
When we get a glimpse into Kay’s home life we see what has been causing Kay to act out. Her mother (Gillain Kirkpatrick) is a manipulative alcoholic, drug addict and religious fanatic who switches erratically in-between loving her intensely, screaming at her, abusing her and using her. There’s an ambiguous man in the picture who is abusing both her and her mother. However, even within this horrible setting, we see Kay’s humanity shine through as she puts herself in harm’s way to stop other children being hurt proving that despite her violent past and erratic behaviour she has a loving heart. These scenes make you question whether people are born evil or made evil by their experiences and trauma. I do have to add that some of these scenes are difficult to watch and a bit overzealous so do bear this in mind if you are considering going to see this play.
The second half of the play takes place over a decade after the last scene as we follow the characters on their recovery after the abhorrent incident on their journey through grief and forgiveness to move on. Several incidents surrounding pregnancy take place that further the character development and lead to the characters colliding and fighting.
The author of this play, Abigail Hood, set out to explore the contributors to these abhorrent acts of childhood violence and try to gauge whether anyone can ever really move forward. Now she can’t answer this question with a yes or no and this play doesn’t do that either- nothing could. This play does even better, it works to explore contributors, victims perspectives, outsider’s perspectives and living with guilt. This play achieved everything it set out to do .
This play ends on a bittersweet note as we see a final reunion and goodbye between Zoe and Kay after more than a decade apart. As they reminisce on what was, what happened and what could have been.
All the actors in this play were brilliant and brought the story to life. Abigail Hood does a marvellous job of embodying the spirited Kay as both a troubled teenager and a broken adult. Emma Keele embodies her role easily and shows us how grief, anger and paranoia can combine.
Overall this play is an act of brilliant writing and acting that gave me chills and left me reeling after I left the theatre as I pondered whether I could live with myself if I was Kay and if I could forgive her if I was Rebecca. The one nitpick I do have with this play was it’s outrageous displays of violence that sometimes seemed unnecessary
This play was brought to life by both the Kepow and Veritas theatre companies, and is showing at the Park Theatre until the 20th August 2022.