Review: GRACELAND, Royal Court

I have a theory that some plays are better read than performed. Language and imagery are easily digested and an ever-colourful imagination fills in the gaps that may be left unresolved on stage. Graceland is one of these plays.

On paper it is lucid and poetic; a meditation on relationships and toxicity. It won the 2022 Ambassador Theatre Group Playwright's Prize. Yet on stage its problems are laid bare in a stodgy production that lacks emotional gravity to keep itself grounded.

Graceland is a one woman show unpicking a toxic relationship between Nina, a British-Chinese woman and her partner, a poet from a wealthy family, only referred to in the second person. It follows familiar story beats. A meet-cute, sex, parents, increasing toxicity, gaslighting, outright abuse, and separation. With an increasingly worn-out form, to the point where it is ripe for parody in Liz Kingman's critically acclaimed One Woman Show, Graceland feels stagnant, lacking any personality of its own.

Its content also feels well-trodden. A cocktail of trauma mixed with smoking area meditation on the nature of love jettisoned in with a sprinkling of nonchalant discussion of sex. One can sense that the writer Ava Wong Davies used to be a theatre critic: Graceland feels like it came from someone who has sat through thousands of hours of contemporary theatre and amalgamated them together into one zeitgeistal totality.

There are moments that hint at uniqueness. Nina's identity as a British-Chinese woman occasionally takes the limelight; she recounts how she quips to her father in Cantonese and briefly considers the implications of dating a financially-stable white man propped up by family wealth. But these ultimately feel like inconsequential veneers applied from too high an altitude to alter the play's DNA. Perhaps that is the point; to normalise discussions about the intersection between class, Asian female identity, and toxicity. It's hard to say for certain without the right momentum behind it.

The direction adds fuel to my initial hypothesis. The set shoots itself in the foot by having its audience on both sides facing each other. Even the most charismatic performer would struggle to hold such a tersely divided space. While Sabrina Wu does an admirable job, she can't juggle what might as well be two audiences alongside navigating the rambling script.

She hobbles around a bed perched on a platform surrounded by mud and moss, becoming grubbier as the relationship sours. Portentous symbolism doesn't help the production find itself; the mud is a heavy pastiche of Simon Stone's Yerma and Pina Bauch's The Rite of Spring. A gratuitous rain effect feels shoehorned in for the sake of aesthetics.

Is it fair to criticise a play for being derivative? Are we really coming to a point where there is nothing new under the sun? It's nobody's fault per se, but the fact that Graceland is playing at the Royal Court, an institution that prides itself on its dedication to new writing, ought to account for something.

Graceland plays at the Royal Court until 11 March

Photo Credit: Ali Wright

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