How do you sit through a torturous hour of tension, revelation and brutality and leave wanting more?  To have been taken…no…dragged through a journey of pain and suffering, feeling emotionally bereft at the end, is no “joyful” experience.  Geoff Thompson’s Fragile is an artistic outlet for a writer that suffered not just a single life-changing abusive event, but all the extra daemons that come along with it.

 

Child abuse is so terribly, horribly misunderstood because those lucky enough to have dodged the unseen bullet are all too often wholly ignorant of the depths of damage it causes.  Not the physical damage (though this can sometimes be life-long too), but the psychological damage.  The twisted, battered mind; the stolen innocence; the guilt and shame; the deadly cycles of self-loathing.  It has often been argued that the abuse itself is not what causes the lasting damage, but the aftermath.  The doubt in people’s eyes when finally the victim can speak about it, or their stupendously abusive questions like “did you enjoy it?” or “did you lead him on?”…  Thompson captures these moments with the truth and sincerity that surely only someone who has experienced such terror can behold.

 

You want to believe and deny at the same time.  To believe makes us feel stronger, as if our condemnation of such terrible abuse exonerates us from our own inaction.  To deny lets us defend ourselves from a responsibility to act in order to protect.  Have you ever not had time to stop and listen to that isolated, angry child?  Have you ever walked on thinking that “loner” kid is just weird and should be avoided at all costs to save yourself the bother?  Have you ever said “don’t cry” because someone else’s tears make you uncomfortable?

 

Do you realise that as you walk away from the theatre, shaken by what you think was a fiction, that for every ten people you pass, in all likeliness, one of them has suffered (perhaps still suffers) similar abuse?

 

It’s this whole gamut of emotional mess that transfixes you when you watch Thompson’s play.  There is such poetry in his writing – and by poetry I do not dare to suggest a romanticism – the rhythm, the repetition, the layers of metaphor and symbol chip away at you as you sit through a barrage of images that are graphic enough to plant images in your mind, but vague enough to avoid a gratuitousness that many lesser writers fall into. 

 

I find it hard to write about this play because it is not a literary work of brilliance… it is a dramatic work of magnitude that requires, demands, and successfully holds your attention throughout.  This is a play that you “experience” – and it delivers a shattering blow that will resonate for some time.   To gasp at the horror that occurred on that terrible night at the school, to an innocent eleven year old boy…is not enough.  Overriding all that, I feel, is the shock and anger at the unwittingly naïve compliance in the abuse that comes from all those who did not (do not/ don’t want to/ can’t bear to) believe it happened – or at least happened the way Thompson describes it.

 

But that man on stage – that sublimely talented actor – is not the one who needs your ears.  Nor does the writer who told you his story.  The most gut-wrenching part of the play, for me, is the moment when he says that all he could think about when “it” was happening was how angry, upset and disappointed his mother would be.  That moment when he apologises to his mother (the woman who asked him if he’d led the abuser on; the woman who denied the abuse for her own shame) epitomises the depth of his lasting pain.

 

That moment spoken not by a forty year old man, but by an eleven year old boy.

 

Fragile has got to be one of…if not… THE… best plays I have ever seen.  I can only describe its writing as something unnervingly beautiful in the way it manages to communicate some of the ugliest actions of human nature.

 

I congratulate the production team for a brilliant show.  I praise the Old Joint Stock for its bravery in programming it.  I thank the writer for sharing it…

 

…and I implore more people to experience it…

 

…not for their sake, but for the sake of all the unknown victims who have yet to find their voice, and someone else’s ears.

 

Colin Ward

June 2014

 

 

Play: "Fragile" by Geoff Thompson

Starring: Nigel Francis 

Venue: The Old Joint Stock, Birmingham

Date: 5-7th June

 

The Old Joint Stock is also taking the production to the Edinburgh Fringe this year for a 25 show run.