A girl. An empty street. A half-eaten Subway.
And you. And you passing in the rain. Turning the corner when I saw you.
Croatian writer/actor Danaja Wass draws on her own experience to deliver this psychologically dark one-woman show where she explores loneliness, homelessness, thoughts of suicide and mental health. Directed by Madelaine Moore, Notch is currently showing at the Vaults festival until February 23rd.
A.A. is moving from Eastern Europe to Dublin “the promised land of Guinness and gift shops” apparently. Wearing a green t-shirt that displays the words “craic dealer”, she soon discovers Irish people aren’t as nice to foreigners as she was lead to believe. One local refers to her as a “f**king geebag” upon hearing her foreign accent.
Alone and homeless, she needs to beg to survive and has to overcome the stigma of homelessness as well as xenophobic attacks.
A TV in the background cuts to various clips from Irish daytime tv talkshows often shown vaguely through static. Interjected with this are home videos of the young Irish woman she talks about throughout the play.
The play doesn’t follow a clear timeline. It seems to flip back and forth. I found this quite confusing at times.
At one point, she is in a hostel, a mixed dorm, pretending to sleep when a group of rowdy drunk English lads come in and make lewd suggestions of what they want to do to her. She tells us one of the men jumps on top of her but he is tasered by a device she has under her pillow that resembles a pink dildo.
She complains about the gang to an unresponsive male receptionist and has to sleep in the reception area only to return to find her belongings gone and toothpaste text spelling the words “SLU..” on her duvet.
As the play progresses, the TV shows imagery of her distorting her face. This is then projected onto the stage floor in an effective way which demonstrates her breaking mentally.
Wass’s Irish accents are convincing from the northside Dublin accent to southside posh people she encountered. She throws in a Cork accent at some point as well.
Notch is currently showing at the Vaults festival until February 23rd. Find out more here.
