When I was a student, many years ago, I saw an amateur dramatisation of Susie Orbach’s groundbreaking book Fat is a Feminist Issue.
I felt so seen that I still remember it now. Back then, eating disorders were seen as a woman’s problem, one that, if you listened to Orbach (and I did), was caused almost entirely by the patriarchal society in which we had the misfortune to live. Anorexia, bulimia, the list stopped there.
‘Nothing bites back like your own mind.’
Fast forward several decades. How things have changed. Body image, issues around food, gender dysphoria, and obesity can all be added to the ever-growing number of problems the Western world has with size, shape and, fundamentally, identity. Few people can honestly say they’ve never experienced some kind of problem, and if they haven’t, their child, sibling, parent or friend no doubt has.
VESSEL is a new quasi-verbatim drama written by Grace Olusola for Dawn Productions. It’s based on the responses of over 120 people who, in 2021, were asked about their relationship with food and with their bodies. And from the very beginning, when the five cast members shout out random thoughts on food, size, heroin chic, bra sizes, wartime rationing, donuts, yum-yums, and an obsession with Reese’s peanut butter, I’m sure that everyone in the audience can hear a few bells ring.
We’ve all been there. It’s a 21st century nightmare, and lockdown, Olusola says, has made it much, much worse.
A box of props sits on an almost bare stage. Cardboard food packaging is used to great effect; it’s a spoon, a sign, a pudding. The play consists of a series of scenes, and the first is a satirical take on reality TV shows: ‘Formerly Obese People Cook With Their Families.’ It’s funny, but most of all it’s painful to watch Dolly ’25, a Formerly Fat Person’ (Molly Evans) and Rango (Joel Aston) meet on set to discuss Dolly’s apple crumble;
‘my favourite before I lost all the weight and became a person worthy of love.’
Self-worth is so often tied up with size – ‘if only I lost weight people (most often potential partners, sometimes peers) would like me.’ Poor Dolly can’t even let herself taste the food she’s cooked. Interestingly, Dolly’s mother is present throughout, urging her to eat. Anorexia is known to be about control, or rather the lack of control sufferers feel they have over their lives. Food becomes the only thing over which they have power. And for girls in particular, mothers are so often unwittingly part of the problem. Dolly is 25, but her Mum is still looking over her shoulder. No wonder she gets upset.
Joel Aston is excellent as Rango, a gentle, kind and clearly nervous man who tries to encourage Dolly, saying she looks just as nice in her old (‘fat’) photo as she does now. He also has a sad story; he thought weight loss would change his life;
‘But people still see me as invisible.’
Dolly, though, can’t accept his compliments or his love; she hates herself too much.
In the next scene, with Iona Blair as Mum to Carmen (Sekela Ngamilo), Olusola looks first at body image. Mum is no longer with Carmen’s demanding father Carl – he made her feel great when he felt like it, and she spent a lot of time trying to please him by looking good, ie by dieting. Now she’s locked into the all too predictable cycle of dieting, getting fed up, going back to fast food, and then back to dieting again. She’s got a new man, Joe, who sounds about as exciting as a crispbread with a scraping of cottage cheese (Jackie magazine,anyone?), but he’s reliable and he’s good enough to overlook her stretch marks and sagging breasts. What a guy.
And then we are back with the mother/daughter situation. Carmen, says Mum;
‘..is a good girl. She eats all her food, always clears her plate.’
One again ‘goodness’ is conflated with eating, but whereas an anorexic sees food as dangerous and bad, a mother is trained to nurture, she wants to give to her child. Eating is good; refusing food is interpreted as a rejection of love. No wonder Carmen is conflicted – but we can’t judge Mum either, all of her social conditioning says Feed People.
Things get darker when it becomes apparent that Carmen has (surprise!) her own problems. She’s obsessively listing everything she eats; a day is a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ body day according to how well she’s been able to avoid food. And she’s always hungry, with;
‘a hunger so intense you could feel it in your ears’
And when she gets desperate, she binges on anything and everything. Then she exercises. Then;
‘I sent myself to bed.’
She doesn’t just go to bed. She sends herself there. It’s a punishment.
So if she’s eating all this food, why isn’t Carmen fat? The next scene, one of the strongest in the show, explains it all. Here Carmen sits in a toilet stall. In the next stall is Sam (Aston.) They start to chat. Carmen’s crying. Sam’s eating crisps. Again Olusola manages to combine humour and pain. Both of these characters are suffering; Carmen’s been overlooked for a big part in the school play – she wants to be someone else, someone beautiful;
‘Acting makes me feel good. I can not be in my own body.’
Sam, meanwhile, has other problems. Sam likes routine, order, knowing what comes next, rituals to feel safe in a hostile world;
‘Sometimes I feel there’s not much for me beyond this stall.’
And when Carmen leaves the room, we find out why Sam finds the world so very hostile. Sam’s not happy in their body, but for a very different reason from Dolly or Carmen. They explain their predicament in a stream of consciousness monologue that gets faster and faster as their anxiety mounts. So much emotion; such good acting; a tour de force.
The tension is broken in the next scene, in which a stand-up comedian (Molly Evans) tells us about her peer group at school, which still meets up once a year. Again we can see beyond the jokes to recognise more women who are still suffering, trying to make themselves perfect to please parents;
‘They wanted a boy’
or partners, who are not allowed to look at them naked even when they need urgent medical care. These women are grown-ups, but nothing has really changed. They’re still ruled by their own desperation to please. Where does this need come from? Why are we never enough?
The final scene in VESSEL is especially heartbreaking. Anonymous Rhino (Jules Upson, remarkable) lets us into the miserable world of an obese, possibly Aspergic young man, stuck at home with his unsympathetic family. Crouched over himself, he rambles about his size, mentions his imaginary friend, assumes different personas, and hugs his toy elephant;
‘I like elephants. They spend most of the day eating, and it’s cool.’
He is trapped in his home, one where Christmas dinner is a supermarket ready meal eaten on trays. And he is imprisoned in his head;
‘Nothing bites back like your own mind.’
At the end of the play, the actors once again stand around the props box. They close that box, and they breathe deeply; Aston places a hand on Upson’s shoulder. And really they all deserve a pat on the back, they’ve all been great.
VESSEL is at Greenside @ Infirmary Street (Olive Studio) at 1.55pm every day until 12 August.
Calls to BEAT (the UK’s eating disorder charity)’s helpline rose by 300% in lockdown. BEAT’s website, which offers information and support, and has dedicated phone lines for each part of the UK, can be found here.
