An unoriginal piece saved by a gripping performance.
It’s 1928. Lila is all alone in a hospital for the criminally insane. Without any support, she is forced to face her secrets and the darkness of her past that led to her imprisonment “Packed with playful poetry and vivid trauma,” says the description, though this one-woman show from Shea Donovan perhaps struggles with the latter claim.
The play itself is well-written for the most part. It’s a nice choice to have Lila use nonsense poetry as a salve for her wounds, employing memorised passages to convince herself of a less troubled past. The writing is vivid and descriptive and certainly helps bring Lila’s world to life—vital in a lower-budget show with minimal set.
Rather than playing through uninterrupted, the play is split into scenes which explore different facets of Lila’s life and current mental state. This works well enough, although occasionally interrupts the play’s flow and feels less satisfying than if the story elements had been organically linked.
Armed only with two wooden chairs and a bucket and cloth, Shea Donovan does a great job. Her English accent is flawless and she is clearly a capable, competent and engaging performer. There is a tendency to sometimes slip into the same patterns, though this can be difficult to avoid with only the one performer and is perhaps more of a comment on the play’s writing.
Indeed, the play’s biggest issues are perhaps its choices themselves. I have seen and/or heard of so many plays set in asylums that it takes something particularly inventive to make a mark, and this play doesn’t have it. The rhythms and choices are familiar—such as the ‘drowning unwanted pets’ trope—and the reveal is predictable. Plus, Donovan is occasionally inhibited by her character’s upper-class background when her Downton accent makes some moments seem more petulant than sympathetic.
It almost feels as if the piece is lacking an outside director to offer the outside view. For example, when in a small fringe audience, there’s something alienating about the actor making eye contact with imaginary members of the audience when you are right there. Plus, some of the heightened sections verge on indulgent. The moment where the trauma is revisited, for instance, loses its power by opting for an almost melodramatic emotional delivery at the expense of truth.
Overall, it’s a fine piece of work that, while executed well, suffers from its lack of originality. By the Light of the Moon is an attempted exploration of important topics, though ultimately serves more as a vehicle for the actress than it does as an impactful piece of theatre.