I saw the light… The Light House, Park Theatre

The World is full of broken things. Broken clouds, breaking waves… broken hearts. 

Oh, my heart… I’ve just left the Park Theatre and there's so much warmth on the streets. It's a feeling of connection on so much common ground after Alys Williams’ stunningly engaging performance of her own play. These words are inadequate to explain the contact we have just established and it is not just her ideas and performance but her ability to touch her audience in addressing the truth of the situation she describes; first through analogy and then through a narrative familiar to so many who have experience of living with mental ill-health.

Throughout, Alys mixes humour - this is a very funny play - and avoids direct descriptions that might only diminish a subject over-flowing with categorical thoughts… depression, suicidal ideation, therapy, psychiatry, chemistry… we’ve all got a take on this but we all have to take a breath and listen to new stories and new experiences as, like every lighthouse, the lights within those suffering are unique and amplified in different ways.

How many people do we know who have been depressed, tried to take their own lives, succeeded…? This is so painful we cannot look directly into the light. Instead, Alys takes us on her personal journey and, buyer beware, physically involves a number of the audience. As she says from the start, we get so stuck doing life by ourselves, “but maybe, just for an hour, we can do it together?”

And as one we proceed as two audience members are asked to echo “Man overboard!” as Alys explains the protocol employed at sea when someone falls into the waves. Another blows a whistle following Alys’ lead and she then throws an imaginary life belt over our heads, calls the captain and throws lights into the water whilst keeping her finger pointed as near as possible at the body bobbing in the waves.

Alys Williams, all photographs from Ant Robling

It's vital we remember this example as Alys slowly unfolds her own story about falling in love with a friend, Nathan, someone she met again when studying in Paris and then when she visited him in Dublin, the two venturing out to Dún Laoghaire to the West lighthouse in the harbour for ice cream.

Nathan is initially played by a table lamp but then by an audience member and I have to say that everyone of us called onto the stage is caught up in Alys’ world and we feel no fear, even when, called out as her father I have to pretend to row next to her, her sister and mother and sing Row Row Row Your Boat… this is some kind of witchcraft or Derren Brown levels of suggestibility, as I haven’t sung in front of an audience this big since the school choir.

But that’s what Alys is capable of – first play, first solo performances… one to keep an eye on for certain!

But it’s the way she deals with Nathan’s subsequent mental health issues that are the most beguiling. His light dimmed as the table light, she explains the difficulties in finding the right help in Ireland, his unpredictable swings and the time when he stood on a bridge during the night and almost left… What stopped him she asks, the fear of dying and his feelings for her but, as she says, he cannot live for her alone; there needs to be a firmer foundation. 

What there needs to be is a protocol, something we can all follow to give each other the strength to find and rescue the man overboard. By the end we are illuminated with the passion Alys has imbued in her words and the sense of the love that drove her onwards. It is a truly remarkable play that leaves you dizzy a little breathless and smiling your idiot happy smile all the train home.

Alys at sea. Photo Ant Robling

IThankYou Rating: Are you kidding, *****!

Andrea Heaton directs superbly and creates a blazing fire in the Park 90’s discrete space aided by Matthew Carnazza’s spot-on lighting design. Movement direction from Maya Carroll and Rod Dixon is also key to allowing Alys to command and let our imaginations fill the space whilst we get some Leonard Cohen, a sunny surprise Cliff Richard as well as a haunting but unknown to me, Our Song.

Nothing is overplayed and Alys’ restrain makes this pitch perfect play fulfil the publicity promise of being “a love letter to life”. It is also a reminder of just how potent theatre can be and how it can move us even on a rainy evening in Finsbury Park… for those are exactly the moments when we need to be part of a crowd, all striving to understand and play their part, literally in my case… 

Oh, please go and see this one while you can! 

The Light House plays at the Park Theatre until 13^th April and details/tickets are available via their site here.­­­

Last word to Alys: “Our society is getting so much better at talking about mental health and suicide but I still don’t think we hear many stories about the care involved or the possibility of recovery. I think a lot of people have stories like ours, where someone has ‘gone to the brink’ as it were but found their way back into the light, perhaps over and over again through the years. I wanted to tell that story, to insist upon hope. In the end, that’s all hope is.”

Or, as the poet Pete Wylie said: “You’ve got to hope for the best and that’s the best you can hope for.” 

Together, we make that hope and as a group we sustain it.