Blood by Sergi Belbel. English language translation by Marion Peter Holt.

Trust and honesty, like truth, are devilishly slippery touchstones in the theatre, and if this ambitious Vicious Fish Theatre production didn’t quite manage to raise the stakes high enough on opening night, there is little doubt it could. And if it does, it will be something to behold. Watching it tentatively unfold on opening night, it was obvious that the company had the permission to fearlessly explore within Mr Gooding’s beautifully crafted direction, but – with a few notable exceptions – the cast remained almost uniformly apprehensive and tentative in a piece that demands the exact opposite: a primal scream of fever-pitched fear so real you can taste it.
Belbel’s searing, unsentimental play about the circumstances and consequences of a politically-motivated kidnapping, is an absolute ripper – efficient, perfectly structured, bitingly succinct and powered by flashes of brilliant observational satire. And in a week where we had our own particular brand of political blood-letting, Blood’s quintessential theme of unwavering belief in one’s right to self-determined rule over others in any given dominion, appeared to not have originated in Spain at all – but just a few hundred kilometers north in our own national capital.
Janine Watson, as the kidnapped wife of Jon Peck’s politician, delivered a beautifully complex and committed performance, while Peck, too, was excellent in his dual roles of a hapless policeman and the morally-bankrupt politician. Theatreworks’s notoriously cruel acoustics took much of Kassandra Whitson’s big monologue moment prisoner, but her performance as the politician’s mistress and a pregnant policewoman revealed the essence of a really outstanding performance. Alison Adriano, Chloé Boreham and James Tresise all seemed a little unsure and ill-at-ease – with choices, voices and character seeming to almost evaporate within the huge, stark and demanding space.
Rose Connors-Dance’s superb lighting design made much of the distracting and unnecessary set redundant. (I actually still don’t understand why this show had a set.) Connors-Dance’s obvious understanding and appreciation for the definitive power of shadows and darkness was risky, but flawlessly realised – supporting and, in fact, defining the space perfectly. ‘Because of Ghosts’ contributed some disappointingly fleeting moments of intriguing musical soundscape that seemed to exist almost to have lit the flame under the entire performance. That it didn’t quite take on this particular occasion takes little away from the fact that Vicious Fish are an independent company to watch out for. And if everyone has resolved to accept their entire share of responsibility for what could be a rivetting performance of a fantastic play, it would qualify as the show to see.
Geoffrey Williams

Pictured: Kassandra Whitson in Blood. Photographed by Paul Dunn.