A work in progress, this is a play whose title is easier to pronounce than it looks at first glance: Trichotillomania. Trick-oh-till-oh-may-nee-ah. The term is explained in the dialogue, referring to an irresistible urge to pull out one’s own hair. The phrase ‘I’ve been pulling my hair out’ is often proverbial, but the causes between the metaphorical and the literal versions of this action are the same – suffering from stress or trauma, or perhaps a chemical imbalance in the brain.
Typically for a reading of a play, one must rely on the stage directions as they are given to aid understanding of the playwright’s intentions with regards to set, props, costumes, movements and so on. Very little is acted out aside from the dialogue, which calls, for instance, for miming eating dinner. The action begins in 2018. Nev and Gill have a son, Frankie, who, like many people his age, is seeing someone, Valeria. Valeria’s father is Nev’s line manager at work (though nothing more is said about that when Valeria is finally introduced to Frankie’s folks). Nev will, however, have a new line manager at some point soon: his current one, and Valeria, will go ‘back home’.
Except there’s a twist. Valeria suggests that Frankie go with her, so they can stay together: this means, it almost goes without saying, that Frankie must leave friends and family in the UK behind. Gill appears to be accepting of Frankie’s decision, but then there’s something enigmatic, or, as Ann Widdecombe once said of Michael Howard, “something of the night” about her. It may not be a kind remark, but I stand by it – rather than dispose of a dead pigeon she retains its corpse in the freezer, and it is never explicitly explained why.
It’s Frankie that supposes there might be stress being experienced by tropical birds Nev has had installed in the family’s bird enclosure – the birds all have bald patches (hence the show’s title) and no longer sing sweetly as they once did. Frankie did look after pigeons before they were sold off by Nev, and before him, Nev looked after pigeons for his own father, Alan. As it stands, however, the play’s structure is unnecessarily complicated by flitting between decades and generations – one scene even sets the garden in 1990 and the kitchen in 1997, at the same time.
Then again, there’s nothing wrong with ambition, and it would be interesting to see, at some point, how a production company would rise to the challenge. But some of the scenes are short, and while nothing is to be achieved by dragging a scene out even a second longer than it needs to be, the play felt a little rushed overall – just as a scene gets going, it’s time for the scene to get going, as it were, and for the next one to come in.
This is all the sort of feedback that is welcomed and encouraged (a discussion took place after the read-through). The read-through itself was quite impressive. The ‘cast’, for want of a better term, were handed down the scripts the morning before the afternoon – that is, they spent five hours doing what they could to bring these characters to life. Things went incredibly smoothly, all things considered.
The play explores quite a few themes, and the finished product will need to decide which ones to focus on. For example, there’s an increasing awareness of male suicide rates, so (in my view, anyway) an element of the plot where someone is taken by their own hand, uncomfortable viewing as it is, should be retained. The play has a lot going for it, and with some refinement, could well be produced in the fullness of time.
