Sink Review – Foreword Festival at The Space

SINK

A review by Susy Brett

Part of The Space Theatre’s Foreword Festival, Sink is a homage to the house parties of old – where a bathroom could be the setting for getting wasted, making a dramatic confession or even getting off with one’s worst enemy.

Sink tells a story in a series of non-chronological snapshots, each taken at the same house in the same bathroom during a ‘famous’ house party. We meet the fierce Lissie (Gloria Akinfe), camp Crispin (Dominic Holmes), troubled Benny (Charlie Wright), ‘lazy’ Amy (Alice Lucy), asshole Caleb (Alexander Hackett) and new guy Rocky (Billy Ashworth), as their lives intertwine and diverge forever.

As the synopsis suggests, Sink is an ensemble piece, which thrives on the ever-changing relationships between its characters. Each character is individual and well realised, brought to life by an excellent cast. Their complex relationships with themselves and each other are fascinating to watch, and one becomes quickly and easily compelled in the drama of young adulthood.

Sink’s main success is in accurately depicting a period of young adulthood where no person is secure in their own identity. Drugs and sex are abundant, as are the mistakes. While I am (finally) old enough to know better now, the emotional intensity is all too nostalgic. Sink as a play is a storm of emotion, over too fast and leaving devastation in its wake – not unlike the speed at which these young years pass.

It’s not perfect. There’s either a lack of depth here. It is not tugging on the heartstrings in the way it could and should. While the characters contemplate the stars, something feels hollow. The switching back and forth between different periods – sometimes two different periods at the same time in one bathroom – is far from easy to follow. There are interesting ideas here, like using a drug-fuelled haze to connect with lost ones, but currently a lot feels muddled and confused.

I could not work out whether the scene transitions, which use lighting and music and the characters’ inner torment, were inspired or jarring. Nonetheless, I enjoyed trying to find meaning in them and the change of pace they provided.