Reviews

A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing (Young Vic)

Aioffe Duffin gives a searing performance in this intense monologue

Aoife Duffin in A Girl is a Half-formed Thing
Aoife Duffin in A Girl is a Half-formed Thing
© Fiona Morgan

Watching Annie Ryan’s adaptation of Eimear McBride’s novel is no easy task. It burrows deep into the consciousness of one troubled young woman in Ireland. Performed by Aoife Duffin alone on stage, it is a play that leaves you feeling both helpless and horrified.

Yes, it’s hard work. But A Girl is a Half-formed Thing is also a remarkable piece of writing. Ryan’s smart monologue feels a little like Joyce’s Ulysses, odd snippets of thought and impressions work their way into a broken, fragmented narrative. To begin with it’s hard to follow, then, as the rhythm takes hold, you become immersed into the world of this unnamed character.

She’s undermined at every turn. Berated by her grandfather, screamed at by her mother, her older brother suffered from a brain tumour as a child and has not been right since. As a teenager she is abused by her uncle and the writing deftly demonstrates the way her young brain interprets the attention from him – she is excited by his desire and by the power her body can wield. It is he, an attention seeking predator, who takes advantage of this. And you can probably guess who comes off the worse for it.

The play has made its way to the Young Vic from the Edinburgh fringe festival where it opened to a steady stream of excellent reviews. Ryan directs, and Duffin gives a scorching, intense performance that makes you feel as though you're an extension of the girl onstage. Neither Duffin, nor the play, lets up for its full one hour and twenty minutes run time. By the end it looks as though Duffin has been emotionally and physically steam rollered. And the audience feels more than a little of that too.

The stage is bare in Lian Bell’s designs, with only a rough, uneven floor and shafts of light to lift us out of the studio space at the Young Vic. Duffin barely moves, her mouth spits out the anger, pain and hatred pent up inside this young woman who is left unloved and blamed for all the ills of the world. It's haunting, heavy and shocking.

A Girl is a Half-formed Thing runs at the Young Vic until 26 March.