Review: VIOLET, VAULT Festival

Bertie is living a hectic life in London. When everything starts to go wrong, she moves to the seaside for the Summer to clear her head and figure out what her next step should be. When she bumps into Violet, her world slows downs and begins spinning again at a different speed.

Written and performed by Bebe Sanders, Violet is a warm and heart-clenching play. Generational clash becomes human connection, and she delivers a heartening tale with millennial bluntness and sensitivity.

She delineates loneliness and heartache with specific awareness, thoroughly explaining the feelings of isolation and alienation stemming from having to survive in a big city. There's a melancholic quality to her script as she depicts their unusual friendship through the struggles of mental health and old age.

Her writing is vivid and expressive, flowing in a long monologue detailing the events that changed Bertie's world with plenty of tongue-in-cheek moments. As directed by Ellie Gauge, the show undertakes another level of delicateness with sand and cardboard boxes used to move the action in time.

Sanders' is a story of acceptance: as Violet welcomes her decline, her character recognises and respects her limits and realises that she must acknowledge her needs instead of trying to conform to a society that dictates status.

Cleverly funny, Violet celebrates the quirks of life and turns on the light at the end of the tunnel.

Violet runs at VAULT Festival until 3 February.

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