Written by Hannah Caplan

Review by Marina Funcasta

It is always a revealing experience to watch transfers of Fringe shows. Witnessing a script adapt to its new space and audience can call attention to the several factors which influence a theatrical performance – and how little control the actors, directors, and playwrights truly have over the event.

The SohoTheatre performance of THIS IS NOT ABOUT ME. is a perfect example. Beginning late due to technical difficulties, the conditions for the show were stifled before it even began. But as soon as Amaia Naima Aguinaga and Francis Nunnery took the space, the spectacle took shape as if by magic.

The set, for one, astounded. From the ceiling to the cyclorama, the production engulfed every inch of the stage. The effect of this is gradual, subconscious: before realising we too are enraptured by the world of the play, which extends like a spider building its net. It metamorphosises with ease, a bed becoming a trolley which then becomes Grace’s hiding place during her darker times. There are points where, looking up at the ceiling, I myself felt we were in Grace’s bed with her, hiding from the external truths. It also feels important that none of the set is solid: every prop, except for her Taiwanese juice, is made from felt, or thatched. Perhaps a metaphor for the malleability of her story, and the lack of solidity in the world inside Grace’s head, this play is a true work of poetry.

Having seen the show at Fringe, the Soho transfer felt like a different performance all together. Trading the intimacy of the Former Women’s Locker Room for a larger theatre, the characters found space to breathe, and the result was a much sharper performance. The script exploded scene to scene, and its longer time-stamp gave its slightly more intricate details more depth.

This said, I still feel this show had more to say than it had the space to. The plot is complicated in a very rich way, but covering a decade-old friendship in such fragmented structure made it hard to understand the characters’ relationship, and who they were without it. This is not necessarily a defect – it is clear from the script that Hannah Caplan doesn’t want to present either character in a heroic or villainous light. This brought a more morally ambiguous performance from Aguinaga, whose portrayal of Grace’s mental instability felt earnest and fired.

My reservations mostly reside in the structure of the script, which is ironic given the scene where Grace recognises its primordial importance. While the fragmentary nature was important for the form, I wonder if centralising the ‘event’ that tugged at the thread of their friendship, and caused its dissolution, would have made the questions warranted by the script easier to engage with. By not centralising any singular event, however, every scene emerges as equally important, which carries confusion as to where Grace’s falsehoods lie, and Eli’s truths are buried.

Overall, though, THIS IS NOT ABOUT ME. is a very inspiring feat. It grapples themes of truth and narrative, inadvertently knocking at the door of the biographical genre more widely in a very original way. This forces us to wonder what is at stake when storytelling emerges, a question which bleeds into every aspect of daily life. It is clear that Hannah Caplan’s mind is perceptive and austere from this very promising debut. And despite the moral ambiguity of her characters, one thing is clear – watch this space.

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