The Idiot Colony @ The Rep

23rd Oct 2009

AS the lights came up in the still, inti­mate and very dark­ened Door Stu­dio of the REP, the small audi­ence was con­fronted with a near empty set and three women, each eager to tell the story they had been wait­ing to for decades.

The Red­Cape The­atre Com­pany prides itself on ‘telling sto­ries that mat­ter, move and enter­tain’ and that is exactly what they did with The Idiot Colony. Inspired by real events, the play por­trays the harsh and tragic lives of Joy, Mary and Vic­to­ria who were locked up as young women in a 1940’s men­tal asy­lum to avoid their fam­i­lies being involved in any social scan­dals. After decades of lone­li­ness, forced med­ica­tion and dis­gust­ing bru­tal­ity, the truths and turns of these women’s lives are dis­cov­ered through unusu­ally amus­ing songs, dances, stun­ning visu­als and sound effects.

The Idiot Colony is astound­ing and thought pro­vok­ing. It was fas­ci­nat­ing to see the audience’s hes­i­tant reac­tion after being plunged into 70 min­utes of unin­ter­rupted devised per­for­mance, which reflected the hor­ri­fy­ing truths that occurred in our soci­ety less than a cen­tury ago. The men­tally dam­aged char­ac­ters seemed so sep­a­rate from each other, one of them didn’t speak a word in the whole play and they rarely vocally com­mu­ni­cated directly, yet they con­nected so deeply on other lev­els, lend­ing impor­tance to not only the stylised move­ment and beau­ti­ful visual imagery through­out, but the skill and pure tal­ent of the three actresses who shone and con­nected with the audi­ence, despite the unset­tling and dark atmosphere.

‘My name’s Joy, as in happy’ was one of the open­ing lines that encap­su­lated the play for me. The irony of this line is stark and the play as a whole was so edgy and inven­tive that it was strangely enjoy­able, enter­tain­ing and quite lit­er­ally left the audi­ence in the dark. This play will spark con­ver­sa­tion, debate and con­fu­sion and is def­i­nitely one not to miss.