Katy Halliwell’s new play, which opened on Thursday at the Annex Theatre, delves into the unravelling of a family’s untold secret, lying in the wake of grief.
Grief, loss, and a musical melodrama are what we get from ‘One Missing Piece’, which is currently playing at the Annex Theatre. Saskia Bindloss stars as Martina Wheatly, witty and divided in her search for the truth, with a cast who circle her (both literally and figuratively) to propel the story forward.
Martina, having spent her life in the embrace of her family, discovers a shocking revelation on the day of her mother’s funeral. This is the catalyst for a journey through time which unveils the life of Martina’s mother, and her relationship with her family. We jump between the past, in which memories are lit in golden spotlights and punctuated by crashes of dialogue and laughter that electrify the story, and the present, cold and blue that Martina must wade through to discover the truth from the people around her.
As we first travel back in time to the past, Martina’s father, Harry Wheatly (played by Ben Mansell), welcomes the audience with a prolonged period of silence, before breaking it with a joke and the family jump on him like hounds, procuring an amusing anecdote about schnitzel’s which becomes a running theme. Mansell creates a captivating father, one stunted by grief but humorous in his light-hearted moments, and his relationship with Bindloss is a highlight of the story. This opening is punctuated with an easy and gentle dialogue, furthered by the sisterhood with Laura Wheatley (Anna Wildgust) and later, her boyfriend Nigel Jones (Louis Cleave) who both shift out of the story in these early moments to transform into roles that vary from a priest to german museum curator which they do with ease.
Saskia Bindloss holds a gift for repartee, breathing humour in the script and orchestrating genuine family moments. She equips elongated ‘DADDDDD’s, yelling to her parents off stage and bringing out the gold in these memories which the story desperately needed more of. Her shift, then, to feeling lost and broken, is felt twofold as it cracks these memories into the present day without any visual indicators – the problem I find comes from the second half of the play, which pushes Bindloss’ capabilities below the surface.
As we return from intermission, the play teeters into the melodramatic – music that remained on the diegetic level, tuning the piece or signifying time jumps, shifts into a consistent conversation. The songs ring like a funeral choir with tracks like Eva Cassidy’s ‘Fields of Gold’ or Nat King Cole’s ‘The Autumn Leaves’ dominating the audience’s ears so much so that they stop looking at the stage. In emotional moments where characters break down, the soundtrack composes a cacophony of emotion that renders the actors silent participatory, and instead relies on its music to pack the emotional punches, which could have been served by a cast who have proved themselves clearly capable.
For me, Melis Ensert (Valentina Wheatly) stands out as a key member of this performance, while the script focuses on her absences, the stage feels them even more so. Ensert and Isobel Robertson (Maria Brenner) electrify their scenes, which detail Martina’s mother’s life before she was born. The chemistry between the two is palpable, but ultimately Ensert draws the audience to her. In playing the mother that Martina is searching so hard to understand, Ensert tows the line between charisma and struggle and creates a standout performance in this play.
Bindloss and Ensert, and hats off to casting for their familial similarities, cultivate a struggling mother-daughter duo without ever having a line of dialogue exchanged between them about the secrets Valentina kept. This holds homage to what these actors are capable of doing, and how the physicality of this play lends itself to the enigma buried in the story. The choreography comes in the form of physical theatre, composed by Lily Atkins, and certainly adds a dimension that the play would have been lacking without. In fact, I felt it could have been engaged with more. In particular transitions, there was nothing for the audience to watch but the set being packed away by the cast in barely dim lights – in this way the flow of the piece could have been suspended by intermittent moments of physical theatre as the stage moves itself around, rather than exclusively during the story.
As we swim deeper into the mystery of Valentina’s life, the cast expands to include Amelie Brenner (played by Emma Leeson), daughter of Maria, who aids Martina in her search for the truth. Her sweet countenance and similitude to Robertson’s mannerisms make her a valuable addition to this storyline and compose a visual mirror between the two friendships that ultimately the play stands itself on.
Katy Halliwell’s story is, in essence, one with promise. It offers the question of something bigger, character dynamics that could be spun and pulled into something greater. If given a larger stage to adopt these timelines and expand the scenes I find that this could be a play of compelling and hard-packed emotion and interaction – though it currently feels in its infancy and the room for adaptation in both script and stage is clear.
‘One Missing Piece’ is on now at the Annex Theatre, and you can buy tickets here. The Theatre Group is also performing ‘The Marriage of Figaro’ at the end of November, which you can reserve tickets for here.
The trailer for ‘One Missing Piece’ is below:
