Currently being presented by Camden People’s Theatre, Lark’s “I Feel You Apart From Me” is a show in monologue form presented by way of voice notes and pictures sent via WhatsApp over the course of a day, but spread across the course of a year, segregated into a prologue and the four seasons.
Feelings. They’re so very complicated. Just how do you best express them to another person? And to make things even more complicated, how do you convey how you really feel when you can’t see the person you’re addressing? Is the written word enough, or can the spoken word have more impact? And what about still images - can enhancements to a simple photo turn it into something far more powerful?
After the prologue sets the scene and mood, the day commences in a bright and breezy fashion, which could be typical of any person on any given morning. Things soon become much more complex though - as the day (and indeed the year) progresses, we start to see just how much the un-named lead character’s personality and feelings change/progress prior to and in the aftermath of a relationship breakup - but all done through the aforementioned voice notes without the audience actually seeing the character’s face, and with the only other clue to how her true feelings are changing throughout the day (year) being the gradually-changing appearance of the pictures which are interspersed with her voice notes.
This is an extremely original piece, and is presented in a brilliantly innovative manner which feels extremely relevant given the current situation. The sheer raw emotion put into the voice notes by Emer Heatley is absolutely stunning, and thanks to her expressiveness, it’s very easy for the listener to empathise with the turmoil her character feels and thus be drawn into her world, the ending was so haunting and acted with such brilliance. This is a piece that will stay with me long after the voice notes are deleted.
More info and link: here.
Review: Kay Johal