No Obvious Trauma

Published Monday 14 August 2006 at 15:35 by William McEvoy

With intermittently beautiful sections of physical performance, No Obvious Trauma tells the story of two psychiatric male doctors and a female patient. It alternates between bouts of frenetic movement and static dialogue exchanges, with too many narrative loose ends failing to tie up.

Wheelchair-bound Ruth is unable to speak, leading her two posh doctors to treat her case like the games of chess they play. As the piece progresses, they reconstruct her history, one of the doctors projecting his own desires and memories on to her. In the end, his own mental collapse coincides with her recovery.

Two large white screens and a table on wheels are constantly shifted about the stage, the company striving to include silhouette and puppet work to identify this as physical theatre. But they try too hard for effect, creating a tick-box production and an over-busy stage. Excellent and economical ideas, such as recreating a train journey with torches, are lost in the melee.

There are astonishing moments of physical intimacy however, where their ideas, like their bodies, fly. It’s an earnest and disciplined piece of work but a more rigorous approach to sifting through the results of the devising process would lend it the elegance and resonance it lacks.