Review: Pity Parade, Hen and Chickens Theatre

One of the common themes of Camden Fringe shows is that many are in their early stages of development: what we are seeing right now is (hopefully) a good first draft, a starting point and, after the festival run, something for the creative team to take away and work on further. That’s especially the case for those shows playing in the middle of the afternoon – taking slots that are probably a little cheaper and perfect to test out new ideas in front of an audience who probably won’t be expecting too much. So, it’s a lovely surprise when you stumble across a play that feels fully formed, one that has clearly been honed and brought to the festival as ready as it can be. Pity Parade is very much that show, and the biggest surprise is quite what it is doing in this 3 pm slot, when it should be doing a week’s run at the prime 7.30 pm start time in its own right, not inside a festival.

Polish immigrant Olga (Magdalena Puchalska) is busy trying to devise a eulogy for Charlie, her dead boyfriend. Except it’s not that easy when you were only going out for three weeks! Yet here she is, frantically trying to think what to write, having been coerced into it by his grieving mother while she tells Olga how she was clearly the love of her son’s life.  

Told across fragmented timelines, we witness how Olga arrived at this point. Not just in that three-week relationship and her meetings with his mother or co-worker Sarah, but through her childhood too. It’s in these childhood recollections that we start to appreciate it’s perhaps not Charlie that Olga needs to mourn and find a way to let go of. Rather, she needs to move on with her own life, letting go of a past that clearly saw the loss of a sister, while also grieving being so far from home, in England because, she says, she was bored. But bored of what?  

What’s so beautiful within the writing is how little is actually explicitly spoken of Olga’s former life, or of that lost sister; we can make assumptions from the clues, but it’s never directly laid out. Yet there is still enough to tell us all we need to know: that the tears that Olga sheds are for her sister and for herself much more than they are for a guy she really didn’t know that well. It is simply stunning writing, fully appreciating the idea that understanding can be gleaned from just cleverly placed crumbs. 

But Pity Parade is complete in more than just its writing. Lighting and sound cues both feel perfectly in step with Puchalska’s brilliant performance. Scenes change mid-sentence as she takes us back to another memory, another moment in her journey. Lights switch, the sound adjusts, and often her whole mannerism switches as well. Instantly, we are somewhere else in the story: her childhood, those few weeks with Charlie, the mother’s home, or her own home as she frantically scribbles down what she needs to say. 

Pity Parade is both disarmingly funny and deeply moving in its portrayal of grief and how we must face it eventually, even as we try to run away from it, both physically and metaphorically. It all comes together perfectly, leading to a truly beautiful closing scene delivered in Polish; you don’t need to understand what is being said to know it is a lament for both Olga’s sister and for herself, and for all that she has lost along the way. Expect to see this show on at a more traditional time very soon. 

Written & Devised by Patrick Burley-Brown and Magdalena Puchalska
Directed by Patrick Burley-Brown

Pity Parade has completed its run at the Hen and Chickens Theatre as part of Camden Fringe.