Flying Fox
Edinburgh 49+3
15/08/18
EDINBURGH 49+3
15AUG2018
A Dangerous Woman (theSpace @ Jurys Inn: 6-15th Aug: 21:25: 60 mins)
Theatre by Nathaniel Brimmer-Beller
“An electric hour of cathartic criminal exuberance.”
Editorial Rating: 4 Stars: Outstanding
In a luxury suite in a Manchester Hilton sits a delightful collection of unexpected combinations: a silver tray holds strawberries and cocaine, a wrinkled Sainsburys bag is full of money, a thirty-something wife who but two years earlier felt her personality slipping away strokes her hefty handgun and plans to fly to an extradition-free country thousands of miles away. Such is the setup of Renny Krupinski’s A Dangerous Woman, a one-woman show acted thrillingly by Louise McNulty, laced of twists and twisted humour worthy of its fiery protagonist’s crazed expressions. Nulty is deftly in command of her character’s story, and delivers an electric hour of cathartic criminal exuberance.
Monica Sims, McNulty’s protagonist, is at the end of a tragicomic adventure when we first see her. She turns on a camcorder and aims it at a plush corner of her glamorous suite. The show plays out as Sims ‘confesses’ to her crimes, and in the process tells the winding story of how it all came to be. The narrative is certainly winding, but mostly quite compelling, helped along greatly by McNulty’s sharp comedic timing and breakneck pace of delivery. She expounds on her parents’ sham of a marriage, she paints a sweet picture of her romance with charming Colin, and recounts the tragedy of Colin’s ALS diagnosis and progression into vegetative state. These descents are craftily juxtaposed, in a clever move by Krupinski, by Sims’ growing interest in thievery and taking for the sake of taking.
From swiping some product here and there from her perfume counter job to plotting more brazen robberies, Sims’ criminal preferences are deliciously explored by McNulty and Krupinski over the course of this show. Her recounting of her first serious robbery, of a Halifax, armed with a gun and a carrier bag, is a highlight, both for McNulty’s emboldened physicality and the hilariously dramatic robbery announcement speech she came up with. In moments like these, the cinematic influence of the freedom of criminality is very well incorporated into her rise to larceny; “Pulp Fiction, Dirty Harry… Shrek. It was all in there, my entire movie-going history” she quips.
The beauty of A Dangerous Woman lies mainly in Sims’ relatable musings and method of liberation. Not that many of us have gone so far as to turn to crime to regain some spark from life, but the desire to become noticed, notorious, and even dangerous, is presented remarkably simply, so as to imply we all have had it in some way or another. On the other hand, some of the assertions Krupinski has inserted into the monologue are perhaps too much of a stretch to fit in with the rest of Sims’ characterization, such as the deeply morose trajectory of her husband’s story. However, in fairness, a central element of the realism of her character is that Sims is not straightforward or easily classifiable, and McNulty is such a dynamic performer that the more puzzling elements of her speech are easy to overlook.
Credit must also go to the fascinating setup of the ‘confession.’ Sims ostensibly speaks to the ‘camera’ for the entirety of the monologue, a clever sidestep of the inherent strangeness of the one-person show — namely, that there is a crowd full of people sitting in darkness watching an individual ‘speak’ to them — because it roots her delivery in a specific subject. Yet this subject also recalls a wider form of confessional method: the all-seeing eye of digital media and the channels of personal expression it offers. This device adds an entirely new dimension to Sims’ explanation, as she can be seen as both proudly recounting her accomplishments as a housewife escaped from monotony to a life of excitement, and in another interpretation, an individual essentially afraid of letting her achievements go unappreciated. She is both owning her story and definitively preserving it; the audience is left to decide whether her confession is pathetic, or empowering.
Ultimately A Dangerous Woman is riveting and charming, bleak yet boisterous. Krupinski, winner of the Fringe First award in 2010 for Bare, has crafted another winning character, and McNulty has done a fabulous job of bringing this dangerous, complicated woman to life.
Reviewer: Nathaniel Brimmer-Beller (Seen 14 August)
