Every now and then you see an actor who is luminous. Shannon Tarbet is one. I first saw her in Anya Reiss' play,
Spur of the Moment, in which she played a 12-year-old on the threshold of adolescence who falls in love with the lodger. Since then, because she is fresh faced and has a gift for gawkiness despite a woman's body, she's played teenagers in
Mogadishu,
Skane and
Hotel. It's inevitable when she does it so brilliantly, bringing something quite different to each role.
In Adam Rapp's
The Edge of Our Bodies Tarbet is a pregnant 16-year-old college girl, Bernadette. Bernadette is New York-bound to tell her boyfriend she's pregnant. For the first thirty minutes of the 75 minute play, she doesn't move from a stool on which she sits and reads aloud the journal she is writing during the train journey from new England. Every thought and feeling is recorded, every encounter minutely described, as is the process of discovering the pregnancy and skipping classes to tell the father in the flesh. Is she scared he might reject her?
Arriving at the boy's home in Manhattan, Bernadette meets his dying father who contemplates his translucent hands and voices the feeling of being at
The Edge of Our Bodies. She watches as he returns to his room, leaving her to wait fruitlessly for her lover. Eventually she leaves, going to a bar where she accepts drinks from an older man and goes with him to a hotel room. As her inner workings are revealed, we become aware that the line between fantasy and reality is thinnest at this age. How much of what we are hearing is true?
In conclusion:
The Edge of Our Bodies is heavy on words and imagery and sorely lacking action or texture. Under Christopher Haydon's direction however, and on Lily Arnold's beautiful set which literally holds mirrors to the teenager's soul, Tarbet gives a beautifully nuanced and compelling performance.
References
Gate Theatre,
Tickets
Gate Theatre, 11 Pembridge Road, Notting Hill Gate, London W11 3HQ. Run ends 18 October
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