River time!
★★★☆☆ Brave
Greenside @ Riddles Court (Venue 16): Fri 2 – Sat 24 Aug 2024
Review by Heidi Steel
ADHD is a lot more than being late and losing your keys, Laura Thurlow tells us in her one woman show River Time! running at Greenside @ Riddles Court all Fringe.
Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD) is the keyring that comes with the keys of having ADHD. Thurlow explains how she has ADHD and how her RSD is disabling her life. Over time she’s learnt coping mechanisms to deal with her struggle with rejection – “river time” is her go to mechanism. This is where she lies in a river, bathing in its waters.
Laura Thurlow. Publicity image.
Although it sounds peaceful, Thurlow tells us about Virgina Woolf who died from drowning, as she plays with her dark humour and relatability about mortality and life’s purpose. She uses gorgeous poetic imagery when telling us about her admiration for Ophelia, in Hamlet, who also drowned.
Poetic references at the start of the show are resolved at the end of the show. This is a lovely informal bread-crumbing for the audience to join the dots together themselves. However, Thurlow’s experience in screen acting doesn’t always translate on stage. Her performance has subtleties and the energy appears too simple to keep the audience engaged enough in her delivery.
In a solo monologue Thurlow doesn’t make any eye contact with her audience, as she looks down from her raised stage. Both of these elements make it very hard to align with her storytelling and feel like part of her journey.
darkly comedic moments
Although the delivery isn’t strong, there are a lot of successful but darkly comedic moments – she’d rather drown in the Water of Leith than in the Clyde for example. Thurlow keeps her audience on their toes with her smart wit.
It’s a thought-provoking script, into which she has put a huge amount of research and invests with personal meaning. It’s a little too intimate at times and can feel uncomfortable, but Thurlow is a force of nature, putting herself in a vulnerable place and exposing herself at the root of her very anxious brain.
Ironically, when Thurlow says that she “can’t be genuine,” feels like the most genuine part of the show. She displays sensitivity and honesty about how she navigates the world with her neurodiverse brain. It is refreshing to see someone share how they actually feel without all the filters of romanticism. She gives an honest painting of the struggles of Janis Joplin and that she didn’t expect to outlive her.
The show is essentially a stream of consciousness with dark humour and lovely profound moments of thought, with not much direction. However, if you’ve ever felt like you’re not doing good enough, or like you are alone on your journey of life, then this is a lovely show for you. It is not a show about resolving but about communicating what we are afraid to own. It is brave and beautiful.
Running time: 50 minutes (no interval)
Greenside @ Riddles Court (Pickle Studio), 322 Lawnmarket, EH1 2PG (Venue 16)
Friday 2 – Saturday 24 August 2024
Daily (not 11, 18): 1.45 pm
Details and tickets at: Book here
Website: www.laurelbrae.com
Instagram: @laurelbrae
TikTok: @laurelbrae
X: @laurelbrae
Linktree: @laurathurlow
ENDS
