Reviews

Lidless

A powerful new drama set back home in America in the
aftermath of Guantanamo Bay is an unlikely discovery among the coloured lights
and hubbub of the Underbelly pleasure dome in Bristo Square.

Chinese/American playwright Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig won
the Yale Drama Series award for this, her first play; it is presented in a white
Perspex box with two dozen punters crammed onto fold-up picnic stools round the
periphery.

Steven Atkinson’s strongly cast production flashes back
to the brutalising encounter between Penny Layden’s American soldier, Alice,
and Antony Bunsee’s abused, now dying, Muslim detainee.

The incident flares up like a time bomb in Alice’s home
town flower shop, threatening the fragile, asthmatic condition of her daughter,
and unsettling her ex-junkie husband.

A legacy of institutionalised political violence has some
unexpected sexual twists, the orgasm of torture mixed in with unwelcome personal
discoveries. Could be a very hot ticket, especially with so few seats; how dumb
is that?