Edinburgh Fringe

Pleasance at EICC – Lomond Theatre

20^th – 29^th Aug, 2021

Back at the Pleasance at EICC I arrived for ‘Patricia Gets Ready (for a date with the man who used to hit her)’. The conference room space had its stage set with a bed with flowing sheets and a table with a radio on it. She took to stage with a meeting with a man whom she used to love; she was taken a’back and became tongue tied. She was conversing with a boy friend who used to beat her and manipulate her.

She stood looking so tall and strong having just come from a cycle. She went to her bedroom to converse with her audience, feeding off of us and responding to our reactions. She explained that she had words to say to this man, having thought long about it but she was too taken back to say them to him.

This dialogue was so natural and played with our hearts in the many laughs she had for her-self and life. Her stories held our attention and immersed us into her world which was the same one as ours. Her description covered a great many aspects of what it like to live both during the abusive relationship and post said relationship. The awful list of abuses she intimately took us through with the fragility of heart rending passages and self knowing sensibilities.

Her scenes with the bed where as though it was her friend also living with her mother, her best friend. In shows of great strength she joked comedically playing with us with full body movements that stirred the play a little. She came across as something innocent telling a true story that we denoted from the dialogue.

In her mind she went over what she would say to her abuser, because she had agreed to meet him for dinner, which didn’t seem like a good idea. She thought about denouncing him and wishing him the worst, word for word. Then she in a loving scene picked out what she would be wearing showing off to us her black number going through a few then choosing a very sexy Orange one. She loved this scene as did we.

We saw her in what we thought was complete happiness, but how easily we forgot the two years of heavy torment she had endured. Of being beaten, torn, put to pieces by this man whom she loved. Her love still filled her as he had done now a long time ago. She told us of pain that never really goes away and even still held a stiff neck she had caused by bracing her-self for each attack.

As her persona unveiled through the play we saw that it was difficult to imagine someone having such disregard for another, as she went over things for her own sake she almost spoke of her-self in the third name. Could we really imagine this if we have never suffered it, according to Patricia the answer was no we cannot, we can simply go home and find ourselves far from this story of hell that lasted an astonishing two years for Patricia.

She knew it as unfair, she knew it was wrong but she had these bruises inflicted forever upon her. Importantly figuring out her own way through, but in many ways it destroyed her. But her heart was strong and brave, she stood tall to give her-self an answer and bring her-self together. This sprinkling  

of dialogue served so much information with a tactile, honest and very funnily and jovially put together play. Offering not the end of something but a hope for a beginning afterwards.

She put on her Orange dress looking great goes to meet him and gives him the piece of mind she was looking for; taking back her energy, her heart and her very life. She was highly flattered by this man and in this scene after she has her words she tells him that she still loves him. And so with a faith so tested came a whirlwind of in some way overcoming it she finished to read a small note that said everything an abused woman is and is not. Examining our indifference to these black incidences she asked us instead to at least accept that this was no joke.

Daniel Donnelly