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An immersive and poetic monologue, The Wedding Speech co-opts the audience into a mutually supportive relationship with the orator, before a shocking transformation in character forces reconsideration. An impressive and nuanced performance alongside elegant poetry elevate this piece.Summary
Rating
Good
Rosemary (Princess Donnough) pokes her head around the door onto the main stage, and thus into the loos, which are appropriately festooned with pastel-coloured wedding balloons and trailing floristry. Finding it empty, she heaves a sigh of relief and rushes in. She’s about to do a speech at her mother’s wedding: an odd one that isn’t it? Neither father nor quite best woman, she’s understandably nervous and is keen to co-opt the audience into the process of finalising her speech, which has to hit just the right note.
Donnough is the only actor in this piece and moves seamlessly between states of nervousness and confident warrior. Using a beguiling series of rhyming couplets in modernised oration, her monologue lasts around 75 minutes. Transforming from a Greek goddess-like contemplative pose of self-admiration in front of the mirror, touching up her make up, she shakes off the confidence to immerse herself physically into the body of the audience, seeking affirmation, revealing flaws and uncertainties. Without doubt it is Donnough that carries this piece to the level it achieves. She is accomplished and nuanced, moving between fluctuating states of emotion as she talks the audience through her imperfect relationship with her mother. Their mother-daughter history is flawed to say the least (find me one that isn’t) but this does have more than its fair share of co-dependency and emotionally abusive behaviour. Which of course is no fault of Rosemary’s…
Writer Cheryl May Coward-Walker has created a script that is fiercely relevant and yet poetically elegant. There are parts towards the middle where the energy sags, and some aspects of the plot feel a little obvious, but it works and every part of the story is essential in creating the dramatic climax. Which is not obvious.
Using theatre doors, offstage noise creates an interaction with the wedding party going on in the background, allowing the audience to experience the hubbub of the event as well as feeling the presence of other key players in this story. The co-dependency between audience and character means we are both co-conspirators and supportive friends and thus we are invested. The realism and humour in the script and characters result in our desire for Rosemary’s speech to be fair and yet representative: we will her to be heard and appreciated, and for her love to be reciprocated. And then something unanticipated happens and Rosemary’s reaction is really quite unexpected, not to mention, well, a little violent. The audience is forced to consider the accuracy of the storyteller, and by extension how much we can trust ourselves. Now that’s good drama.
Written by: Cheryl May Coward-Walker
Directed by: Simone Watson-Brown
Produced by: Holly McComish
The Wedding Speech has completed its current run.
