The Sun Apparatus Theatre Company presents Unprescribed, perhaps one of the weirdest performances at the Fringe but also one of the most inventive.
Unprescribed invites the audience to The Centre to observe treatments for patients with anxieties and obsessions. The patient played bySarah Kenney feels the need to calculate exactly how many breaths constitute the planting of trees. Dana Etgar’s character finds comfort in chopping tomatoes to the extent that chopping starts to control her.
The main therapist, played by Katherine Vince, is a hilarious pastiche of society’s belief that structure, fear and control are solutions to personality disorders.
They construct therapies through dance, music and play – a personal favourite is the floating of paper boats and fairy lights in a box of water, tipped backwards and forwards to create the illusion of a storm.
Props are used in a fabulously silly and engaging way – expect plenty of tomatoes to be thrown around, and a forest of trees which is made out of a seemingly never-ending supply of plant pots. Do not be surprised if you see dancing with carrots which are hidden at the thigh in holsters, or water to be poured onto an Italian opera singer.
Space is used ingeniously in this performance. For example, the very odd disappearance of the therapist played by Vince, who reappears outside the stage room in agitated whispers. Her motives are unclear and she is hard to decipher, making for an interesting reading. The head space of the patient whose dream is re-enacted by the less dominating therapist played by Justina Kaminskaite is also an interesting idea – her approach is more intimate, although equally as mysterious.
Recommended for a refreshingly different approach to therapy.