Breathless

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An altogether intriguing, sympathetic, and engaging exploration of a difficult and challenging problem. Her reality is a slow descent into mental ill health fuelled by anxiety, lack of confidence and repression of her true self. T he hour long play deftly conveys how hoarding and the shame of the condition gets in the way of personal relationships and those that we love, often keeping them at bay.

In her late 30s, she has a thoughtful, interesting new girlfriend, Jo, whom Sophie can envision as a long-term partner. Often in the media it’s a certain type of person they tend to put forward to talk about the importance of it. Her one-woman show explores an original subject with an impressively tight control over language and storytelling. As an ex-actress myself, I am passionate about how theatre can enlighten, educate and shine a light on lives, situations and the frailty that is mankind and mental health. Opening up to new experiences in her late-thirties, Sophie is exploring long repressed sides of herself.

Trying to provide a gap for emerging and established, because it’s just quite woeful, there was an article quite recently I think in the Stage in someone said “We’re creating a culture of Primark playwrights”. The sound design, however, by Holly Harbottle, goes a way towards this, introducing sounds of breathing throughout the play to intensify moments of both sexuality and of panic. Plesance Theatre Trust and Theatre Royal Plymouth are delighted to bring Breathless by Laura Horton, Plymouth Laureate of Words, to Theatre Royal Plymouth and Edinburgh Festival Fringe. One imagines that with a play about hoarding, the stage would be crammed with piles of stuff, but director Stephanie Kempson has opted instead for two rails lined with empty clothing bags.

The degree to which this is a problem comes into focus in this solo show by playwright Laura Horton when Sophie starts dating Jo, the first time she has had the courage to go out with a woman after years of relationships with men. Verity Standen’s music accompanies the character’s emotional world and the simple set avoids literalism. Performed by Madeleine Macmahon, Breathless is a funny, honest and stylish exploration of the knife-edge of hoarding, from the joy to the addiction and suffocating shame. This isn't necessarily negative, it just feels as though the theatrical possibilities of the story haven't quite been fully explored.

If you’re not from a family who can just give the money to you, it’s exhausting, but you know it’s the way it is isn’t it. Instead, she’s a curator, collecting hundreds of different versions of herself, of who she might be: the sexual adventurer, the Booker-prize winner. The urge to hold onto these items that she sees as an extension of herself is all-consuming, but she also really wants to invite her new girlfriend over. MacMahon is a versatile solo performer and engaging storyteller, voicing many characters from Sophie’s girlfriend Jo, her Dad, shady ex-boyfriend and snotty magazine colleagues with swift physical pen portraits for them all.

Breathless is a funny, honest and stylish exploration of the knife-edge of hoarding, from the joy of purchasing new fashion, to the addiction and suffocating shame of having way too many clothes. Her choices feel a bit laboured, laying all of Sophie’s anxieties on the surface rather than letting the story speak for itself. And then there is the shame of a suffocatingly huge amount of beautiful unworn clothes crammed into Sophie’s living space. And then obviously Breathless is on ongoing, I produced the first version of that in Edinburgh, but now the Theatre Royal have taken that on, so I don’t have to worry about it. Breathless is a funny, honest, and stylish exploration of the knife-edge of hoarding, from the joy to the addiction and suffocating shame.Breathless is at times very descriptive, telling rather than showing, but MacMahon brings the world of sample sales to life with a captivating twinkle in her eye. Wheeling about to create different spaces, the rails are a much cleverer way of expressing the seeming invisibility of this problem, as well as the fantasies Sophie ladens her wardrobe with.

With a light touch Horton cleverly shows the deep negative impacts on her protagonist’s job, relationships and social life. Horton’s writing is so deft and detailed that we barely recognize Sophie’s battle with the compulsion until she’s teetering upon a knife’s edge. Working with Pleasance Theatre Trust offers us such a vital opportunity to support artists from the far South West.This spring BIPC Devon is focusing on how we can support female entrepreneurs to turn their passion into profit! The causes of hoarding are complex and there isn’t one thing in Sophie’s life that triggers the anxiety. There is still so much stigma around hoarding and it remains a very misunderstood mental health condition.