Grief, we are told, is love with nowhere to go.
But when it overwhelms us, we look for something to take the pain away. We blame ourselves, we blame other people. We bargain with ourselves; if I do this or that, maybe I’ll feel better?
In Arran R Hawkins’ After the Service: Tales of Love and Loss two characters bare their broken hearts to the world. One is recently bereaved, one is 28 years into bereavement. Both still burn with anguish, guilt and regret.
In With Grace, Hannah Marina plays a young woman looking back on past misdemeanours. If she hadn’t been such a bully, hadn’t been so cruel to the class victim, would she still have suffered as she’s suffering now? Grace is determined to confess to everything she did, and not only to poor Anthea Bevan; she was mean to her parents, her (ex) boyfriend, other girls. She knows it was unforgivable. Is this why her baby died?
Marina brings so much pathos to this character. We feel for Grace as she searches for her own pulse ‘pointlessly beating away’, or holds out her hands, cradling her absent daughter,
‘My tiny sleeping girl’
But then. as if she has to stop us feeling too much sympathy for her, Grace pulls us back into her past,
‘People aren’t nice generally, and I know because I’m one of them.’
Grace’s grief is all the more touching because it’s so restrained. She doesn’t shout and rage. She doesn’t, she says, talk to anyone (apart from her psychiatrist) about her feelings,
‘But I talk to her all the time.’
Marina’s performance is a masterclass in physical acting. Slumped in the chair, her lack of care – for herself, for life – is clear. Hair scraped back, clothes thrown on, she’s lost all interest in her appearance. Gone are the days of makeup and labels. Nothing matters any more. As one hand grips the other, her inner turmoil is evident.
She’d half hoped that being a Mum would turn her into a good person. Will apologising to Anthea improve things? In fact it seems likely that both Anthea and Grace’s long-suffering parents have long forgiven her. It’s herself that Grace can’t forgive. What is there now? In Clive, Robert Margreve (played by Hawkins himself) seeks a very different kind of closure. Clive, the love of his life, died 28 years ago, from AIDS. He’s over it, he assures us; he thinks of Clive with happiness now. Dapper in waistcoat and cravat, whisky glass in his hand, Robert will tell us about Clive. How they met, how the flamboyant Clive, a choreographer and ‘the most fascinating human being I have ever met in my life’, liberated him from the closet. The joy of their life together.
‘Gay means happy. Or at least it used to.’
Hawkins is a wonderful actor; he chats to the audience as to a friend, or perhaps a new acquaintance. I was spellbound by his performance; it was so convincing that I almost spoke back.
As Robert describes Clive’s illness, his carapace of ‘recovery’ begins to crumble and we realise that it’s as superficial as his clothes. He rages against the real causes of his partner’s death, but even then he remains a gentleman, apologising for his language, for his anger.
There are some achingly poignant moments. When Robert cries it’s into one of Clive’s silk handkerchiefs. He’s not been into the room in which Clive died in 28 years. But he’s OK. Or he would be. He just needs closure. He needs those responsible to say sorry.
These two beautifully delivered monologues will strike a chord with so many of us, indeed with anyone who has ever struggled with the cruel finality of loss. Despite their subject matter neither is depressing; they may talk about death, but they also celebrate love.
Sometimes we need to think about the things we most fear. After the Service offers us the chance to do so while sending us that most powerful of messages; even in the intense loneliness of grief, we are not alone.
After the Service: Tales of Loss and Love, written, produced and directed by Arran R Hawkins is at Pip at Gilded Balloon at Appleton Tower,11 Crichton Street (Venue 140) every day until 24 August. There are no performances on Monday 11 or Monday 18 August.
PLEASE NOTE: the original production of After the Service: Tales of Love and Loss consists of three monologues. Time constraints mean that this Fringe show can only include two of these each time, so different combinations of two of the three will be performed on different dates.
