This is such a good production that I was bitterly disappointed when I finally realised it wasn’t new work. (Before I go to a show I don’t read the press release or indeed any of the marketing; I simply check the date on the invitation, and if I can go, I go.)
Clare McIntyre’s Low Level Panic premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in 1988, but coming out of KXT on Sunday evening I didn’t know that. What I did know was that I’d just seen an extraordinary piece of theatre.
Set in the bathroom of a share house, it presents three women in their early twenties. Suiting the setting, the focus is on body image and sexuality. But most excitingly, it’s about thoughts and their awkward relation to reality.
The play is so powerful, so poignant, because it captures perfectly the way young adults have to navigate, for the first time, the tension between their rich, burgeoning inner-lives and the frustrating, frightening outside world.
Sometimes this tension is expressed in the frustration that reality doesn’t match our sexual fantasies. But as Jo says, played with gleeful and totally relatable honesty by Charlotte De Wit, thank God no one knows your thoughts.
Sometimes this tension is expressed in the terrifying awareness that you have no influence over other people’s thoughts, and that it’s not only your thoughts but theirs that create the world in which you must live. This is explored brilliantly by Marigold Pazar in the role of Mary.
Sometimes this tension is expressed in the desire to control, and Megan Kennedy gives a hilarious performance as uptight Celia.
Director Maike Strichow achieves a wonderfully thrilling texture through the juxtaposition of performance styles, giving Kennedy permission to create a gloriously larger-than-life Celia and allowing Pazar and De Wit to present a simple, raw truthfulness.
I recognise these women. Considering the age of the play, you could say I grew up with them. But the fact that HER Productions has been drawn back to this play highlights its enormous and ongoing relevance.
McIntyre writes absolutely superb dialogue. And one of its splendours is that its fad-free. Too often contemporary plays about these type of issues slip into theoretical language, and I’ll be direct: I don’t think that sort of language belongs in theatre. Don’t just throw around theoretical terms like the male gaze or the patriarchy. Show me how they operate. Leave lazy abstract words to reviewers, and do what the artform does best: show Life as it’s actually lived. Show me the women who suffer, and show me their extraordinary vitality, for in these beating hearts, strong and true, we’re offered a vision of a better world and how it will come.
And that’s what this magnificent production of this beautiful play does.
Paul Gilchrist
Low Level Panic by Clare McIntyre
At KXT on Broadway until 17 Feb
Image by Georgia Jane Griffiths
Theatre Red 