Christopher Walker reviews SAD playing at the Omnibus Theatre

The Omnibus Theatre in Clapham is very much back up and running and handing out its distinctive bus tickets for unreserved seating.

No doubt keen to find its feet again, now that Covid has passed, its latest offering, SAD shows that it remains true to its mission.

That is to be “a platform for new writing and interdisciplinary work, aiming to give voice to the underrepresented and challenge perceptions.”

SAD is written by Victoria Willing. An actress turned playwright who has had success before at the Omnibus with Spring Offensive.

She is in her sixties and aims to “give voice” to exactly what that feels like.

As she puts it “There’s a sort of vertigo you feel as you get older when you realise that although you still feel like the same person you were at thirty, but perhaps with a few aches and pains, the world appears to see you very differently, if it sees you at all. Just when the world expects you to behave like a benign cosy presence, I think inside we are raging at the new mantle we have to wear.”

She also has a love of David Bowie and delivering the odd shock to her audiences. All of which is important background to her new work SAD.

The plot concerns Gloria, a woman in her sixties who is experiencing mental anguish. She has retreated to her attic with a bucket, and is glued to her sun lamp. Ostensibly this is because she suffers from Seasonally Affected Disorder or SAD. But there is of course a lot more going on.

SAD, or Winter depression, is a very serious disorder that affects a large number of people in the Northern climes during our hideous short winter days. A number of people including me.

Although I hasten to add I have not yet retreated to my attic. In my own experience the greenhouse is a far more attractive option.

Gloria’s move upstairs has also been brought on by her mother choking to death on Christmas day over daughter’s particularly stringy turkey. I’m not quite sure if we are supposed to find this funny, but it is one of the more believable elements in the plot.

Depression no doubt also follows from Gloria’s clearly unhappy marriage to an aging Marxist, Graham, and her general struggle to cope with aging. David Bowie is played a lot.

Debra Baker pulls off this by no means easy role, in a very unflattering series of dumpy, casual clothes. She convinces us this is a real character, as does Kevin Golding as her husband Graham.

You can’t quite believe he puts up with her, until we realize there’s quite a lot she also has to put up with too.

Into this bizarre set up comes a neighbour Daniel, climbing through Gloria’s skylight for quickie sex.

While no angel, quite what Daniel sees in this “old woman” with a bucket clad in dirty rags, is one of the more puzzling elements in this piece. Especially as he’s played by the rather fit Lucas Hare.

When Gloria wonders if she has been dreaming him up the thought is very plausible.

There is also a cameo role by Izabella Urbanowicz as Magda, Gloria’s best friend from Bratislava.

Daniel is also after sex with her in exchange for a flat upgrade, he is a council housing officer. All of the cast must be congratulated for making these characters seem so believable.

Victoria Willing seems to want her audiences to “believe six impossible things before breakfast.” Like the Queen in Alice in Wonderland we sometimes do….

https://www.omnibus-clapham.org/sad/

 

Pictured: Kevin N Golding (plays Graham) Debra Baker (plays Gloria) in SAD playing at the Omnibus Theatre