Firstly the venue: what a delight this covered wood and corrugated iron space is. Nestled around the corner from the Arcola’s main building, it exudes a cool, spacious ambience. Having established itself last year, it has reopened for the summer.
Now to the play: Rainer is a bicycle delivery rider by day and aspiring writer by night. If that sounds like a tough gig, she zips around London having adventures on her bike – which she has named Jean Rhys – in a way that makes the lives of zero-hours workers seem enviable. She stumbles on to throbbing dance floors, into fashion parties and is offered threesomes, all while delivering pizzas and pies across the city. But soon we discover that Rainer, who is telling us her story, is an unreliable narrator.
What appears to be a feverish and sometimes manic narrative is born of Rainer’s depression – there are secrets to her psychological meltdown which we only discover at the end. Energetically directed by Nico Rao Pimparé, her monologue is a rollercoaster, turning loops and taking some thrilling turns.
As a wannabe novelist, Rainer talks in beautiful, rhapsodising sentences, and the playwright, Max Wilkinson, has clear talent for wordsmithery. “London spreads out like Bladerunner” before Rainer and the “sky throbs purple”. Where this script could have sounded rather purple itself, it stays on the right side of lyricism on the whole. At times it seems to get carried away by its own writerly brilliance though, and feels unruly and self-conscious. Could this protagonist, in fact, be named after Rainer Maria Rilke, the Austrian writer famed for his profound prose and poetry? If so, isn’t that rather heavy-handed?
Still, the effects of Wilkinson’s heady writing, which includes some sparks of satire (so good we wish for more of them), along with an astonishing performance from Sorcha Kennedy as Rainer – kinetic or meditative, just as the mood and her multiple characters require it – makes for an exciting theatrical experience.
Sometimes the plot feels far-fetched, even within the bounds of Rainer’s unreliable narration. The writing has clear signs of brilliance and daring but needs sharper editing. Jamie Platt’s lighting and Jethro Cooke’s sound design are fabulous. Kennedy’s performance is a bravura one. We need to follow these various and ample talents.
At Arcola Outside, London, until 18 June
