Behind ‘Bryony Kimmings: I’m a Phoenix, Bitch’ is the story of a mother’s trauma as she loses her mind, her house, her boyfriend and almost her child. It’s horrible to remember that the woman on stage in front of us went through all of this. It’s hard to imagine what it would look like.
But that’s exactly what this play does. It forces us to imagine until all we want is to get up and leave the theatre. It’s not too strong to say that Kimmings creates in her audience feelings of terror and awe. I couldn’t decide, as I watched it, nor can I decide now, whether the performance was intended more as catharsis for the actor herself, allowing her to enact the process of replaying which she tells us her therapist has suggested, or to make the audience feel and understand. In the end, I think, the two come together, and we are torn apart throughout the play by feelings of overwhelming sympathy towards Kimmings, and an absolute fear for ourselves that something like this might happen.
Kimmings’ show pushes at the boundaries of symbolism. Her set is constructed out of four smaller sets – model versions of scenes in her story – shrouded at first but revealed unromantically and even clumsily as the play goes on. The way in which Kimmings unveils the set pieces is a perfect example of her natural, unpolished style; she is a normal woman in conversation, telling this story in all its grit and reality and without any of the glamour and shining lights of the theatre. Each set-in-miniature contains pieces of costume and props which Kimmings uses while she talks: lipstick and an overdone blonde wig for her first night with Tim, a green flowing maternity shirt for the mother-to-be, a spade for that terrible, terrifying scene. The set pieces are stylised representations of scenes in a life; they are aesthetic symbols but also the touchstones of realism; they are the most theatrical elements of the performance yet also the very things which found it in a real story. We would be wrong to read these symbols as merely aesthetic, and when Kimmings drops this analytic distance, things suddenly become very scary.
What is indisputable in this show is Kimmings’ sheer talent. This performance doesn’t just rely on the horror of the autobiographical story for its effects. The way in which she creatively and so seamlessly brings together the play’s different elements is compelling: the wonderfully unsettling technique of filming herself to create a strange sense of the layering of illusion and reality within this story, the songs and the lighting effects don’t draw attention to themselves as theatrical effects or techniques: rather they seem to flow naturally out of the story she is telling. The precision and ruthlessness of thought gone into every moment is evident.
And then there is the talent of Kimmings’ acting. I salute the balance she achieves between the raw and the controlled; she never lets emotion drown out the performance, the story; she never loses sight of her audience. She begins more informal, breathless, sitting on the floor to put on her sportswear as if about to begin a conversation with a good friend, but she ends in full poetic flow, dramatic in every sense, reflecting on bad luck and on life. Her intensity is spellbinding. Kimmings guides the audience through this nightmare with glorious control, letting us laugh to dispel the tension, only to break our hearts again with her next sentences. This is skill onstage like almost nothing I’ve seen before.
At the end of the performance I saw, her last, Kimmings admitted that she wasn’t sure how she had managed to do this every night for a month through the Fringe. I find myself marvelling, more, at how she has managed to go through the process of constructing this masterpiece of emotion: how did she have the talent but also the emotional control and discerning mind to decide what the set should look like, what music she should use, what she should wear and when she should use lighting effects; how did she rehearse this day after day until it was perfect – a ‘perfect’ expression of the most painful and frightening period of her life? This show is not enjoyable to watch – it’s intensely terrifying and overwhelming – but it does inspire a sense of awe at what this one woman has achieved. It is important and powerful: and it will not be forgotten in a hurry.