A PROMISING PREMISE UNDONE BY UNRESOLVED THEMES AND UNEVEN TONE

By Sophie Clark | Muck Rack Portfolio | Press Invite

I really wanted to like Sit or Kneel. Conceptually it was something I would greatly enjoy: a Gen-Z vicar trying to find out how to be godly and authoritative but also get laid in her village parish.

But, unfortunately I found the hour to have strayed far from God.

I’ll start with the good parts. There were some legitimately well written jokes throughout, especially in the first half of the play.

Playwright Mimi Nation-Dixon clearly has a comedy writing background, and she had some good jibes about men asking questions and a hysterical list of things her villagers need prayers for. Seeking prayer for a Grade 2 violin exam made me laugh out loud.

She also fully committed to the physical comedy aspects of the play which I applaud.

However, the play, much like the Bible, left me with many more questions than answers.

It started off strong, with Nation-Dixon creating a clear world around her character, Margot, but quickly got lost within a bingo card of stereotypical one-woman play plot devices. A sexual assault, an eating disorder, a complicated family dynamic, intrusive inner thoughts brought to her via loud-speaker.

At the very least, if these unfortunate stereotypes of “female struggles” are all going to appear in a play, then they have to get resolved one way or another, but Nation-Dixon never got around to that. I don’t doubt her ability to write a compelling conclusion, which is why I was left so baffled by her total lack of one.

If the play had any real sense of edge I would have thought it was almost an avant-garde anti-conclusion but unfortunately that wasn’t the case.

When it comes to the actual writing, well, her ‘inner monologue’ knew she used too many metaphors, so I’ll leave that to her to figure out in her next endeavor.

The “love” plot line, if you can call it that, also left me wildly confused. Margot develops a crush on one of her parishioners. Great idea. But, instead of fleshing out his part in the last third of the play, she induces tinnitus upon the audience via a caustic sound-effect that really took me out of the play.

There was also a monologue, as a one-woman play is want to do, about feeling ugly.

I think everyone in the audience would agree that Nation-Dixon looks like 1990s Gwenyth Paltrow. It felt comically absurd, and not in an intentional way, that even as a character far from herself, Nation-Dixon could pretend that “nobody has ever called me pretty.” I wish she’d just leant into the fact that she is stunning, the concept of a super hot female vicar is hilarious. Stick with that.

Lastly, Nation-Dixon should know better that the best way to kill a joke is to explain it. Nobody needed a five minute speech about the title of the play. It’s a joke we all made at age 14 in church. We get it. Leave it be.

I think there are some interesting bones and lines to be explored in Sit or Kneel, but it could do with a re-draft and a real conclusion.

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