No View From The Window brings on tears at the 24:7 Theatre Festival (From Messenger Newspapers)

No View From The Window brings on tears at the 24:7 Theatre Festival

4:05pm Tuesday 27th July 2010 in Theatre Reviews By Julia Taylor

No View from the Window is one of ten new plays which comprise the 24:7 theatre festival.

This play, written By Kim Jackson and Rebecca Mahon, who is the only performer, and sensitively directed by Kim Gillespie, examines the relationship between a woman, Louise, and her recently deceased mother.

Instead of mixing with the other mourners, Louise escapes to her childhood hidey hole – the bathroom.

Even now, she resents the self-centred mother who put herself before her child. Her secrecy begins with the approach of pubity and her refusal to tell her mother when she starts menstruation.

Since then she has shared nothing with her parent and still carries an unbearable memory which she keeps to herself.

That squalid bathroom, set against blackness is, in effect, her mind which we gradually begin to fathom.

55 minutes is a long time for one person to keep an audience engaged but Rebecca does so.

You feel as though she is telling her story only to you and confiding in you alone as, with appropriate changes of vocal expression, she tells of her childhood and teenage years.

She, and Dave Dhonau, who composes appropriate background music, recreate the muffled noises she hears in the room below.

Her voice changes completely when she imitates Sid, a purveyor of avocado bathrooms who becomes her mother’s boyfriend.

She tells how her husband, Steve, became her escape from both the bathroom and her mum.

But, we know she can never escape and the final scene brings tears to your eyes.

* At New Century House, Manchester, until July 31. Star rating: ****. Tickets are available from www.247theatrefestival.co.uk