Created by Louisa Marshall and Amber Charlie Conroy

Review by Aislinn McSharry

Summer Hall – Former Gents Locker Room

Provocative, confrontational, a fierce whirlwind of orchestrated unpredictability: Lousia Marshall and Amber Charlie Conroy’s Clean Slate dissects relationships between men and women, focusing on the “weaponised incompetence” that creates unwilling housewives out of supposed equal partners.  

The play starts at the end, a woman breaking up with her boyfriend, frustrated with his domestic ineptitude. She recounts their relationship: meeting at a club, him gradually moving in, his disastrous attempts at birthday celebrations for her, and drip-by-drip, his maladroit handlings of household tasks are fed to the audience. With just Marshall on stage portraying the woman, the audience fulfils the other roles: we each individually become the boyfriend, holding her, talking to her, or repeatedly saying the dreaded “I’ll get to that later”, whilst also playing the roles of therapist, or IKEA workman. Ingeniously, the audience’s unawareness about on-stage things, like where the dishwasher might be, is used to highlight her boyfriend’s similar ignorance… except he’s been living there for six months.  

Marshall’s portrayal of the woman is charismatic, dynamic yet seething, a bubbling anger that when come to the boil, was exasperated and emotive. Whilst Marshall perfectly executed many facets of anger and frustration, and the audience was made to experience a niche blend of unease and enjoyment in their constant in-show involvement, perhaps the script could have allowed for a few more character dimensions of the woman to shine through. Adding layers to her characterisation besides her fury, may have created a greater escalation for her ultimate rage, horror and disappointment. That being said, Marshall’s expertise showed in her comfortability with the audience, working with our unease, capitalising on our initial awkwardness at relevant points in the narrative, and ultimately making us enthusiastic participants.  

Ending the show by nonchalantly asking us to clean-up for her (with the spray and sponges left on our seats upon arrival), before casually heading out of the theatre, the audience is allowed insight into the everyday of the woman’s four year relationship, and hopefully, like the catharsis the woman experiences in telling her story, the audience helps create her ‘clean slate’.  

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