A Mile In Her Shadow @ The Store Room, North Fitzroy

Is it possible to effectively illuminate the experience of a dislocated mind on stage? An upsidedown set, evocatively menacing sound design, a black scrim, erratic lighting. Yes, I suppose it is.

Does it make for illuminating theatre? In the case of A Mile In Her Shadow, no.

Promoted as an examination of the ravages of dissociative disorder in the landscape of a relationship, A Mile In Her Shadow played more like someone had choreographed the ramblings of a lunatic. That may sound insensitive. Don't get me wrong, it was a very verbose and intelligent lunatic, and a lunatic with very valid, even structured experiences. Ultimately though, the script delivered an hour long train of diseased thought, which unfortunately left little to hook any emotional response to. In a work that relies so heavily on a relationship, the lack of an emotional core leaves an intraversable chasm between the audience and the experience.

When it worked, it worked well. The few lucid patches in which we saw the relationship from without rather than within revealed a real chemistry between the actors, who were superb throughout. But these connections were few and very far between.

A Mile In Her Shadow marked the reopening of The Store Room as The Store Room Theatre Workshop, a company with a newly found focus on development. As Artistic Director Ben Harkin explains, "One of the great problems facing new work is that there is just not enough time given to creative development. The aim of SRTW is to allow that time for play. Time for imaginations to soar, to come crashing to the ground, to pick themselves up and start all over again. SRTW promises audiences an exhilarating adventure into the unknown.”

A Mile In Her Shadow is a perfect candidate for such treatment. There is an very solid work waiting to step forth. At present the play is far too tangled up in the mind to garner any emotion response, or indeed to develop any true sense of the the effect of dissociative disorder in the physical world.

Tags: theatre, review