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A song of grief and loss
Collidoscope
Birmingham Rep Door
**** HANNAH Graham is a talented writer and
performer who with a beautiful sensitivity and personal recollection,
tells us about her journey through grief. Her story is astonishingly personal, but yet the
audience are connected on a universal level. Collidoscope revolves
around the theme of loss, a raw emotions of which most, if not all the
audience must have felt before. She sets out to highlight the inner struggles
that come with the overwhelming feelings of losing one close to you.
Collidoscope is beautiful, poignant and something that everyone can
connect to. Graham shows us what it was like for her to deal
with grief over a seven year period. She explains to us rather
strikingly the decisions and journey’s we pursue as grief takes its
hold. In Graham’s case, she tells us about her life
over seven years and the imprints this left in her life. Grief is unique
to everybody and no two experiences are the same. In Collidioscope,
Graham lets us see how she worked with her own grief. With the atmosphere of the scenes being set by
sounds being played by musician Simon Smith, Graham shows us how when
finding it hard to release, she takes solace in the 1930’s actress
Madaline Carol. Throughout her journey, Madeline Carol becomes
part of Graham’s skin. With Smith providing the low beat sounds on a
double bass, Graham gives her own renditions of Carol’s songs which are
so famously seen in Madeline Carol’s 1930’s and 1940’s films. Graham is a fantastic performer and writer. As
her two superb talents come together, we are exposed to the lyrical and
poetic within a tale that takes us from the corner of a Wolverhampton
pub to a summer camp in West Virginia and back to a London student club
all in ninety brilliant minutes. Graham not only tells her story, but gives us
some wonderfully touching explanations of her coping strategies of
dealing with death. Throughout the play, we are exposed to flashbacks
and scenes from her past. In her words there is a lyricality that alludes
to the fantasy of something that is no longer there. Her poetic style to
the past allows her experiences to be forever remembered in poetry.
There is also an element of the spoken word which of course gives light
to the deepest emotions and feelings. It is within this poetry that the
power of personal loss is felt.
Graham then comes back to the present world by
delivering monologues to a spotlit microphone, addressing the audience
about why a particular event happened and more importantly, what
happened as a result. Collidoscope is a story coated with grief and
beautifully told. Graham courteously invites us into her life that is so
true and personal, that the audience cannot help but be touched by her
open spirit. In a great celebration of art, Graham expresses a universal
theme in her beautifully unique way. Artist Graham and Director Natasha
Pryce worked fantastically well together to let the audience see a
profound vision with a touching outcome. Elizabeth Halpin
30-03-15
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