What’s it all about?
Effie, a woman whose life is an endless cocktail of fury, emptiness, ingesting anything that will help, recovering and starting again. Until one night the cycle changes, offering a glimpse of hope.
The thing about hope in an era of austerity and cuts, is it’s there to be crushed.
Who’s in it?
Solo performer Sophie Melville demands your constant attention as Effie, strutting around the stage with more swag than a comedy robber. Frankly, I’d be too afraid not to watch her. Quite simply, it is a superb performance capturing all the rage, bravado, depression, hope and fire of a life lived against the odds.
What should I look out for?
Don’t look away from Melville’s performance; not for a second.
In a nutshell?
Battering theatre of the most urgent nature, Gary Owen’s Iphigenia In Splott is an important, bruising, unforgettable production.
What’s being said on Twitter?
#IphigeniaInSplott @NTWtweets was astonishing last night. I sobbed. Such an important piece of theatre. Don’t miss it!
— LeilaCrerar (@LeilaCrerar) January 30, 2016
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Wow – @SophieMelville is absolutely incredible in Gary Owen’s superb #IphigeniaInSplott @NationalTheatre @ShermanCymru – go see it!
— Ben Clare (@benclare) January 29, 2016
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Will I like it?
Watching Iphigenia In Splott is like being beaten with an emotional baseball bat. It is bruising and painful. It will make you wince and shy away. There are moments in which you’ll think the beating has stopped; it hasn’t. And you’ll be rubbing and nursing those bruises for days if not weeks after.
That is how it should be. This hits hard because it needs to. At a time when the most vulnerable in society are hit hard time and time again by cuts and bias, by a blindness or lack of care from those with the ability to change their circumstances, it needs to hit so hard that we’ll walk out of the theatre and those bruises will remind us that this has to change.
Go, be hurt by Gary Owen’s urgent, timely writing and Melville’s unforgettable performance and nurse those bruises publicly.
Iphigenia In Splott plays at the National Theatre’s Temporary Theatre until 20 February. You can book tickets through the theatre’s website.