Hostage: Bleach: Burn by Heather Taylor – a review

August 1st, 2007 • Reviews

Anyone familiar with Heather Taylor’s writing will know her as a consummate poet and performer whose writing has a strong sense of story and character. Hostage: Bleach: Burn is a trilogy of hard-hitting monologues where the deftness of Taylors poetry skills shine through. It does not make comfortable viewing, instead the audience is asked to reappraise their ideas on what makes a suicide bomber, how AIDS in still seen as a taboo topic in many communities and why being consciously apolitical does not protect one from an extreme political act.

Peter Henderson is finely cast as the fidgety and angry Harold in “Hostage”. Harold is being held prisoner in an unknown place. He recalls earlier losses and how he was “Dreamless, restless, sleepless” in his previous life. “Hostage” is a moving tapestry of recollections where Harold is condemned to be a prisoner of his own thoughts. Describing himself as “..not political. I’ve never cared who runs things…It didn’t seem to matter somehow”. It is Harold’s political apathy, his inability to take responsibility for the tragic events that have happened to his family, that finally are his undoing. Taylor marries the personal and political forcing us to question our own moral standing. I found myself simultaneously sympathetic to Harold’s plight and also angry at hearing of his sons accident and how he determined to say that it was not his fault. Ultimately Harold is held hostage to his own thoughts as he plummets in to his own very personal hell. “Hostage” is brave and finely tuned writing deliberately offering no easy solution to some very difficult and topical questions.

By contrast Melinda, Samantha Wright, in “Bleach” is dealing with her beloved Uncle’s death from AIDS. Melinda staggers on stage a bottle of half drunk white wine in one hand, giddy with grief and alcohol. Wright portrays the desperate and lonely Melinda with a finely pitched sensitivity. It soon becomes apparent that Uncle Tom was Melinda’s friend, confidente and soul mate. Picturing an imaginary future with three children she says ” I can’t see who I’d be with but I can see the rest”. The sense of erasure haunts this skillfully written piece, not only is Uncle Tom’s death still taboo but even his home feels absent of his larger than life character. “The house has this graininess…like all the rooms have forgotten to live” Melinda tells us. It is finally her father who acts as a cipher for the continuing ugliness of homophobia “my dad said burn it, I would not step in that house if it was disinfected with bleach” and it is this determination to wipe out even the memory of Tom that breaks Melinda’s heart.

Finally in “Burn” Matthew Bulgo as Pierre talks about the famous father, Pierre Laporte, who he never knew but was apparently named after. This is the most complex of all the trilogy. The illustration of Pierre’s mother, a woman holding on to a life long fantasy, is both repugnant and engaging. Pierre appears as a man whose own sense of identity has been erased, he is a no one living in the shadow of the stories his mother has told him about his inception “It was our little secret, I was raised on those clippings, like a fairy tale”. When the truth about Pierres father is finally revealed his sense of isolation deepens. “I am silent, I feel myself drift away, everything turns to nothing”. His mother refuses to acknowledge who he is and Pierre is left with one final attempt to express his desolation.

All three plays reach a climax of painful self expression. At just over an hour in length it is astounding to witness such a fierce emotional trajectory – a must see for anyone who wants to experience fearless and honest writing and for any poets working on solo shows Taylor’s mature understanding of character and narrative is essential viewing.

Hostage: Bleach: Burn
until Aug. 4, 2007
£7.50
6:00pm
Etcetera Theatre
Oxford Arms; 265 Camden High Street
London, NW1 7BU

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