POINT OF YES. To 24 August.

Edinburgh - Fringe

POINT OF YES
by Janet Godley

Smirnoff Underbelly To 24 August 2003
3.25pm
Runs 55min No interval

TICKETS: 0131 745 3083
Review: Timothy Ramsden 3 August

Insight into the world of heroin addiction, but in need of development as a performance.There's no doubting the authenticity Janet Godley brings to the performance of her own script. It identifies the time of Thatcherism's inner-city regeneration and the triumphalism of the Falklands war as the period when heroin began spreading through Glasgow.

Specifically, Calton, just to the city's east, within a breath of the People's Palace, a monument to the popular culture the drug does so much to destroy. As inter-scene film sequences - many of the shots repeated beyond the point of emphasis towards that of tedium - show, there's deprivation beside emblems of civic splendour. And it's in one of the area's pubs that a bright, attractive young man brings the drug which will destroy him and others.

Told in two phases, reflective and present-tense angry, the script is open about heroin's initial attraction - like an intense whole-body orgasm, being 'stroked by angels', together with a feeling of achieving the meaning of life.

But it leaves no doubt about the long-term down-side. The physical destruction, the mental and moral deterioration. And it hints at the social milieu in which it easily takes hold. The speaker here has a struggle between a violent husband and drug-taking - at first the fear of threatening his control over her keeps her off the chemical.

Ironies abound - as the split atom lead to nuclear weapons, so heroin began as a pharmaceutical antidote for depression. And the drug's invasion
more than matches any military Western victories around the world.

There's a lot in here. At this early performance, though, Godley still needs to relax - the first scene showed signs of nerves, with some uncertain movement, the performer's attention moving for moments from the audience and fussy unnecessary business - there's no point in the momentary grabbing of a glass and tea-towel, other than to show we're in publand.

An important document, then, that can do with some polishing-up.

Cast: Janet Godley

Director: Graeme Alexander-Young
Film: David Martin, Andrew Rennie
Music: EI Presidente

2003-08-03 22:34:53