Royal Dick veterinary school for two shows, which are building strong word of mouth.
The first is The Afflicted, a uniquely haunting piece by a brand new Scottish company called groupwork,
who are here with the support of ThickSkin and Glasgow’s Tramway theatre and arts centre (although for
long-serving Fringewatchers, the piece’s co-director Finn den Hertog also directed last year’s hit Square
Go, from Fleabag producer Francesca Moody, which has earned a return run at this venue in 2019).
Devised by Jake Jeppson and the company, the play tells of the Hope River Girls, a true story from earlier in
this decade in which footage of 24 young women from an upstate New York town were shared online as
they experienced violent and unexplained twitches and spasms. As the case became a source of fascination
to news media, so did the lack of explanation build a sense of frustration; no viral, chemical or psychological
cause could be found, and as time went on the symptoms – for all but four of the women – went away.
Den Hertog and Vicki Manderson’s play is a gorgeous, atmospheric cacophony of styles and genres, as four
actors – Grace Gibson, Amy Kennedy, Olivia Barrowclough and Felixe Forde – embody the four most
deeply affected sufferers through powerful sequences of choreographed physical movement and live video
in which sinister fright effects are used, while a video narration speculates as to the causes of their affliction,
detailing Hope River’s involvement in historical witch hunts through to the psychological effects of present-
day deindustrialisation.
The piece packs a whole lot in with style, flitting between psychological horror, true crime, the investigative
tone of an Adam Curtis documentary, and a hint of The Crucible. It explores the human potential for
groupthink, especially in a viral age, and shows us a reflection of our own sometimes unhelpful urge to seek
and fashion answers for ourselves where none exist.
Taking place in the same room, Zoe Ni Riordain’s one-woman show Everything I Do (created with her
sister Maud Lee) is also intrigued by the subject of human connection and interested in the use of different
theatrical techniques to achieve its aim, although this is a much lighter and less busy piece. In fact, it’s
essentially a performance of a live concept album by Ni Riordain – who has a beautiful, raw singing voice,
which sounds particularly appealing when backed by her own scratchy electric guitar – as she undertakes
increasingly sweat-inducing feats of physical theatre.
From promising beginnings in which she softly asks audience members whether, for example, they believe
love can exist if you don’t know the person you’ve fallen for, or can’t understand their language, the set-
pieces become ever more frantic; at first performing a song while trampolining dressed as Spider-Man, then
dangling the trampoline precariously from a rope in the rafters. The lyrics hint at, if not love then certainly
hope for a personal connection from a significant other, and Ni Riordain is a truly mesmerising performer.
Yet it feels slightly disheartening that the playful physical aspects of the show don’t reveal as much as her
music.
‘The Afflicted’ and ‘Everything I Do’ are at Summerhall until Sunday