Entering the space at the Gate Theatre you are accosted by spinning yellow hazard lights and heavy, fast rock music, reminiscent of Massive Attack. This sensory barrage is maintained throughout the show as an undercurrent, and a loud, blinking close to each of the short scenes. It also gives a sense of raging in the darkness, helping to reinforce one of the many themes of the play: humankind’s inner anger.
The sharp script, written by Elinor Cook, surrounds the shooting of a girl in a yellow dress, caught on video, during protests in an unnamed Asian country. The shockwaves ripple through our protagonists’ lives, throwing one stark emotional sucker punch after another. A mother’s disappearance forces a woman into ever more desperate measures to find her. The man who uploaded the film is forced firstly to question his motives and then to claim publicly that he faked the film, as the oppressive government rape his girlfriend. Protesters struggle with their families, while in England an elderly lady struggles with the concept of charitable donations going towards the use of violence against the government.
There are occasions when Cook’s device of overlapping threads of dialogue loses the audience’s focus somewhat, but for the most part it crackles with anger, emotion and razor-sharp social commentary. This includes humour, and Cook’s satire of middle class values is as carefully constructed as that of the disengaged social network kids, who share everything without thinking about it.
Christopher Haydon’s staging of a thin traverse with platforms at either end adds to a sense of claustrophobia. There is no escape from the barrage of questioning from characters on all sides. The theme of light and dark, yellow and black, is also well constructed. Yellow becomes a key colour for the resistance, and in the final scene where Yasmin (Eileen Walsh) rips down one of the walls to the black box, revealing a realistic hospital room drenched in light, the effect on your already battered senses is strong.
This play will not appeal to everyone. To my senses it is abrasive and relentless. However, the effect they are going for is brilliantly achieved, while the cast back this up with strong, driving performances, particularly Walsh and Emilie Patry. It’s punchy, it’s tense and, while I found it produced more of a physical effect on me than a compulsion to deep engagement of thought, you don’t half have to sit up and take notice.
Image of an Unknown Young Woman is playing at the Gate Theatre until 27 June. For more information and tickets, see the Gate Theatre website.