Just the Tonic at The Caves
Aug 6-30 (23:40)
As the Edinburgh Fringe was immediately welcomed into the theatre, there was a palpable sense of excitement & anticipation for writer-performer Reilly O’Shaughnessy’s Belly. The show has already sold out a couple of times, & I found myself sitting beside its producer, Hadley Phares. Three years ago Reilly had the beginnings of an idea for a play; 14 months ago she began putting it into practice, specifically intending to create something for a Fringe stage. Director Juliet Kapanjie subsequently became involved, & the result was now before us.
O’Shaughnessy stood to the side, welcomed the room, then went straight into a conversation between the characters Ellie & Susan—only two of the many people she would conjure during the performance. Characters, memories & conversations began tumbling into one another, constantly leaving us to consider the reasons behind each exchange. Schooldays resurfaced from long-ago memory, but beneath them lay something considerably heavier: failure, dissatisfaction, pain & an absence of joy.
Yet Belly itself remains playful & intensely physical. Its emotional temperature rises & falls according to the state of its central character, who can suddenly fly into flurries of self-hatred concerning weight, fitness & the endless judgement of how a body ought to look. She’s told she could lose some weight, use some weight, change herself somehow—the exhausting external chatter gradually becoming internal.
O’Shaughnessy’s dizzying telephone conversations reveal a mind operating beyond full speed, something she performs extremely well. Between these frantic passages come quieter interludes in which she kindly brings us back up to date: future calls, chats, texts & plans. Her blue sports jacket comes on & off; beneath quiet piano music she occasionally makes light of proceedings. But these moments are only diversions from the reality at hand. Again & again we’re pulled into, then momentarily released from, her sparks of frustration.
Still, she manages to smile & love, even if only in flashes. Regret combines with musical comedy, allowing her to speed through what could have become an unbearably dense encounter with an impressive ease & swing. In one particularly grim turn she rattles through medications, diagnoses, possible defects, side-effects & impacts. It’s handled with taste & grace; she moves swiftly onwards, but leaves us with the devastating accusation:
“It’s all your fault.”
Gradually it becomes clear that writing like this rarely comes from somewhere its author has never visited. There is an intimacy to O’Shaughnessy’s reasoning that feels lived rather than merely imagined, & Belly is indeed rooted in elements of personal truth.
I found myself looking, without staring, into the features of the actor before me—simply allowing myself in to see how I might feel. She drew me closer. I listened with greater intent & began to catch her drift through an increasingly extended emotional experience. Unravelling Belly brings easy moments & desperately difficult ones. She’s incredibly sad about her weight, tussles painfully with her own image &, on top of everything else, has to deal with life—a life capable of inflicting terrible pain.
There are friends. There are high moments. And we accept them with total belief, rooting for her, eventually crying with her. This is where the play finds its purpose. Through all its structures, adventures & emotional turbulence, a strange calm begins to settle across the room.
But it is the calm before the storm.
Finally, in an immense act of grief, O’Shaughnessy lays everything down before us. This isn’t a discreet theatrical tear rolling prettily down a cheek. This is all the pain in the world crashing through her eyes & back into ours: the loss of somebody you love, intensified by that loss being only days old. In her cries we hear the sound of a world freshly turned upside down & inside out. Suddenly Belly is asking something far larger than what we think of our bodies: what does loss do to love itself?
Belly is an exploratory, astute play, written with a remarkably steady hand & performed with precisely the emotional commitment its story demands. There are hidden structures beneath its apparent chaos, while O’Shaughnessy’s face seems to glow whether carrying tears or smiles.
A treat to engage with, a moment to reflect upon, & ultimately a deeply affecting exploration of love, grief & the painful business of learning how to inhabit yourself. As the character grows, there can be no consoling her—because, eventually, she understands that she must learn how to console herself.
Daniel Donnelly
