A one-woman show that finds new light in an all-too-familiar story.
Silence and contained chaos—scraps of paper tossed haphazardly into cardboard boxes surrounding a few stools and a wooden table—await the audience of this Camden Fringe premiere of Skinned. The silence builds further as Natasha Ryszka-Onions timidly takes to the stage and methodically sits at the table, scribbling in a notebook.
This one-woman piece, co-written and directed by Kirsten Grinstead and Aoife Parr, explores the bureaucratic and systemic experience of sexual assault victims as their cases are filtered through endless paperwork and across various HR desks. With motifs evocative of the Olivier Award-winning Prima Facie, audiences are confronted with a woman forced to personally reckon with issues she has dealt with time and again from behind the safety of her desk, never imagining she could end up on the other side of it.
This production has real potential to make a wave on the Fringe scene. Grinstead and Parr’s co-creation shapes a multifaceted world through detailed sound design and inventive scenography, with a storm of paperwork and a microphone materializing out of a box. The clean staging lets the script take center stage, guiding us through the complex aftermath of the woman’s sexual assault by a coworker.
Taking on the monumental feat of a one-woman show, Ryszka-Onions brings no shortage of drive, navigating sensitive memories and embodying several key players in the case. Though moment-to-moment intentions occasionally blur in the effort to distinguish one fragment from another, her quirky enthusiasm keeps the piece interesting and engaging throughout.
This insightful, thorough script would be a gift for any actor to take on. But a piece is only as strong as the walls around it, and the Etcetera Theatre hasn’t quite managed to minimize the creaks and buzzes that come with a dated space, leading to a few disruptions along the way. With such a small team behind this Fringe run, it’s understandable that sound design couldn’t fully cover for the venue’s quirks — and a forgiving audience can happily look past it.
Skinned has already closed after its Camden Fringe run, but it deserves a mention among the sea of one-woman shows that pass through the festival each year. What sets it apart is the sensitivity and creativity Grinstead and Parr bring to a familiar topic, shedding new light on a story that’s too often told in the same way. Rough edges and all, it’s the kind of small, thoughtful production that makes Fringe worth digging through.