Lamesha Ruddock
“I’m always performing the version of me that’s easiest to love.”
The Waiting by Nina-Lou Bricard is a captivating one-woman performance. It unravels the inner life of a runaway bride, former model, who is a vision on a downward spiral, a woman shaped by male expectation and slowly suffocating inside it.
French prosecutors recently closed the investigation into alleged sexual assaults by model agency boss Gérald Marie because the crimes took place too long ago to be prosecuted under French law. Maeva’s story becomes one thread in a wider cultural tapestry that has repeatedly dismissed the harm done to women in fashion and beyond.
Maeva enters the space in a tasteful wedding dress and cat-eye sunglasses, thirsty for a Chardonnay and clutching a brown leather bag. The glamour is intentional, yet beneath it trembles a former supermodel who has spent her life contorting herself into whatever version of womanhood would be easiest to consume.
As The Waiting unfolds, Maeva twirls her hair and flirts with the empty space around her. Every gesture is honed for the male gaze. The repeated clicking for the attention of a distant garçon becomes a sharp symbol of her desperation for male validation. Each click grows harsher, and each attempt to summon affection lands more painfully. Directed by Daisy Roe, Bricard captures both the absurdity and the tragedy of that hunger. Her forearm becomes a phallic symbol, and when she drags her lipstick across her face the audience feels the visual poetry of sexual entrapment.
Memories appear like shadows that crawl beneath her skin. A stretch of her arms, a sudden jolt as phantom touches interrupt her peace. The piercing of the thin veil between past and present reveals trauma that never left her body.
The soundscape deepens her world. Angelic hums drift through the room, reminding us that in Maeva’s cosmology, God is a sexy woman. Her bursts of erratic energy give way to moments of vulnerability. An accidental kick to a small dog results in a brief whimper that lands the perfect comedic beat, slicing through the tension with an uneasy laugh.
A sharp top light and cool side light sculpt her body as she convulses, a physical manifestation of trauma settling inside her. Faint audio of distant party chatter fills the space, the noise of a world that kept moving while she froze in time. The shift from elegance to surrender arrives when she sits with a wide gait, slips to the ground and ends on her knees before an imagined man. It is a stark image of a woman returning to the posture the world has scouted for her.
Through this sequence, The Waiting becomes a mirror held up to a culture that prizes beauty yet ignores the bruises left behind. Nina-Lou Bricard delivers a fearless and intimate performance that oscillates between glamour and grief, comedy and confession. The Waiting is funny, frantic and hauntingly human.
Performances of The Waiting have now concluded at Voila! Theatre Festival 2025.
Jake Mace
Jasmine Silk
