Laura Griffin, The Flickering Truths of a Cruel and Dirty Bitch

Review in Issue 18-3 | Autumn 2006

The Flickering Truths of a Cruel and Dirty Bitch, Laura Griffin's lush, funny monologue performance about her obsessive and eventually inappropriate love for a famous but unnamed playwright (GUESS: Joe Penhall), often left the audience wondering what to do. After an extreme performance of a breakdown, Laura went up an aisle and into the seating. It gave me a strange kind of disturbed feeling, as though I was being stored at, and found myself reluctant to turn round and look at her. By removing herself from the stage, it seemed that Laura was accusing the audience of being an audience, of encouraging her dramatic self-absorption, the quality that led her to her obsessive and unrequited love. Technically, think the play was faultless. There was some recorded material and some simple music, which was well integrated. Griffin's voice did Swoops and fast-talk and rhythmic lyricism, also some singing-a very powerful voice, striking a few people, I think, as shouty, but reminding me of Emma Thompson Thematically, a number of things in the play did not make sense: an immortal but not immortal puppet-cat, continued use of water-based SFX and water-related language (which presumably by their powers combined were meant to communicate metaphorical concepts, but meant nothing to me); some of the loud bits - and the best advice for the audience and reviewer) came from Griffin herself: 'Do not expect to understand; best to surrender yourselves to feeling only.' I felt uncomfortable, laughed often.

Presenting Artists
Presenting Festival
Presenting Venue
Date Seen
  1. May 2006

This article in the magazine

Issue 18-3
p. 28