It’s normal that a theatre prioritizing the development of new work will take on more creative risks – sadly, this one did not pay off.
A plant – no matter how many fruits it’s grown by harvest time – is simply not safe to eat if the soil in which it grows is toxic. In much the same way, the Traverse Theatre’s production of Supposing: is so enfeebled by a poor narrative foundation, it’s likely less worth anyone’s time to pick apart the grittier details and instead focus on the few crumbling pillars beneath.
It is worth mentioning upfront that the Traverse Theatre has been one of Scotland’s most supportive and fruitful incubators for new writing. That they have clung to their mission so ruthlessly means that they inevitably take larger risks than theatres that predominantly program classical pieces and proven favorites by well-known and over-represented playwrights. This, combined with their current season’s applaudable focus on female voices, was very much in mind while I struggled to watch this production. Still, I would be remiss to skip over the ways in which Supposing: clearly did not work and perhaps why this story might not even be suitable as a piece of live theatre.
Supposing: begins in the recent aftermath of a nasty fall. Sally, middle-aged, unemployed, and en route to a job interview at a theatre, accidentally falls into a hole where construction workers are fixing a gas main. Ever since the fall, she hears (in her mind) what she likens to a chaotic Greek chorus, which occasionally informs her of terrible flashes of the hyperlocal future: a pregnant mother down the street will die, her nextdoor neighbor has cancer, her therapist will commit suicide. Meanwhile, Sally’s relationship with her husband Richard deteriorates to a point beyond repair as her increasing preoccupation with this internal chorus renders her progressively more anxious and isolated.
The premise of Supposing: is promising. It seems to want to propose that, contrary to the idea that facts and finite truths act upon us, we ultimately hold as “truth” whatever we actively choose to believe. It reminded me of Holocaust survivor and Austrian psychiatrist Victor Frankl’s famous quote: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” In the face of more information (i.e. her That’s-So-Raven-like flashes of the future), Sally is forced to learn how to emotionally approach it all, even when she believes it will be bad. It’s a pretty great analogy for so many crises of our day: the climate emergency, the rise of fascism, the certain financial crash that AI will shortly wreck upon us all. However, it doesn’t quite hit that mark. In fact, it gets nowhere near it.
First and foremost, I can’t care about a character’s dread for the future if I don’t care about the character. Neither the writing nor directing delivers characters worth rooting for.
In their very first scene together, Sally’s and Richard’s chemistry is entirely absent, largely due to the fact that their relationship is a sad flat line. When she first confides in him, Richard’s first reaction to her is (1) severely muddied by unclear lighting and sound cues and (2) not rooted in any kind of genuine concern for her well-being–something I believe is less about the acting than the writing. He’s more angered by her request to let their neighbor know she has cancer (and I’m still unsure why he needs to ferry that news instead of simply Sally herself) than lovingly concerned for her mental fitness and immediate anxiety. I don’t believe he cares about her, which means I don’t care about her, which means… we’re in for a very long hour-twenty.
The set itself also hobbles the believability of their relationship. In most of their scenes together, they merely sit across from each other and do nothing but talk at each other, sharing practical information to usher the plot forward, demanding that the other believes them, and also repeatedly questioning whether the other believes them. (The theatre adage “Show, don’t tell.” might also go a long way to explain this play’s structural issues.)
Rich choices in body language, physical intimacy, or just plain old domestic tasks are absent, but a sadly undersized kitchen table on wheels (which the actors just shoved a few feet upstage whenever they didn’t need it) and two chairs (not on wheels – for some reason that bothered me) sucked their energy dry. At one point, one of the oranges on the table is peeled, but the doing of it is so labored and unrealistic, it’s hard to swallow. Inane busywork that gives them the appearance of listening to each other in a shared domestic space supersedes choices that otherwise would have revealed motive, character, and real relationships. The residual feeling is one of disbelief that these characters actually live in this world together or that they are even remotely familiar with their kitchen table – the only prop that might have signified the prior strength of their relationship and the following tragedy of its undoing.
The direction of the actors also could have been sharper. Instead, the rules of play within the production’s conceptual design were often violated, to much confusion. Dramatic lighting and sound changes were muddied by actors that did not change clearly enough with them, in temperature or tempo.
In fact, energy was not something that changed much over the course of this play, resulting in the boring arc-less journey of one long and impossible fight between two strangers who have always ever hated each other. In the spirit of tying in the traditions of Greek drama, perhaps it could have been profitable to delve deeper into the possible contrasts of the narrative. What about the marriage was and continues to be uniquely lovely and loving? If we don’t care about the marriage in the first place, why should we care about the marriage’s downfall? Similarly, what about falling into the hole and getting a Greek chorus planted in her head might have been a positive contribution to Sally’s life (she does sort of come to this realization but only in the last lines of the play). If the point of the play is to investigate what we choose to believe, that thread probably needed to be invested in a bit sooner, and contrasting narratives could have helped.
Finally, at the eleventh hour, two brand new actors enter for their respective “scenes.” The parts are so miniscule, they’re almost comical. Why was that necessary? Sure, the point is that what was not onstage earlier (the mimed brick, the named characters of the nextdoor neighbor and the pregnant refugee violinist) suddenly becomes manifest; debated truth becomes reality. But (1) if we’re really only writing characters into the last pages, is this really a story that warrants taking the form of a live play? And (2) it didn’t look super great to have a brown woman in a hijab (who absolutely shreds a violin solo, by the way) in the last thirty seconds of the show, only to have that be her only prop-like bit. (This is also after she has been directed to sit in the audience for the entire show.) These un-theatrical choices offer a desperate last-minute narrative flail that is neither climactic nor earned.
If anything, this story is begging to be an audio piece. Supposing this work undergoes further development, maybe, in the Traverse’s ongoing championship of new work, they’ll at least let the story they currently have on their hands choose its own fate.
Show Listing: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/supposing
LISTINGS INFORMATION:
Venue: Traverse Theatre
Dates: Aug 9th -30th
Time: various (90 mins)
Ticket prices: £27.00
Traverse box office: 0131 228 1404 / Tickets here.