Lola Rose Wood
Disclaimer: In the spirit of ‘Think Less, Feel More’, what follows is a stream of consciousness to capture the feeling of watching this show. It is therefore an extended piece to suit this expansive form.
Repeat after me: I am not in a hot and yet somehow still damp railway arch, I am on the beach, I am by the sea. I am on the beach, by the sea. So the blue lights and seagull sounds would suggest. I am on the beach, by the sea.
A woman’s just been washed up. She’s wet, she’s gasping, she’s – FISH PIE. Wow this actress has big hands – has anyone seen Hacks? Hannah Einbender’s character has got nothing on these fish pie making hands. Ah, another woman who hates her husband, here we go, whom she describes as like a mole, on her back, always there, not worth getting removed. Yikes..
Who made this dirty mermaidcore dress? 10/10 would wear – it’s long, it’s mudsplattered, it’s embroidered with various shades of seamoss and – AND it would even appear to have pockets. I love pockets. Shoutout to Chantal Jarem for the mudlarking dress of dreams.
There’s been an Event. A death, I take it. Is this a grief play? Kind of. Dead parents – but not her dead parents. Her husband’s dead parents. So she’s an orphan in law? Why are there no words of bereavement for anyone but the widow? Interesting choice to focus on a close bystander of grief rather than the directly bereaved. His dead parents have left him/them(?) a large lump of money on a Coots card, which Woman has unchecked access to. Heavy bleeding and stomach cramps – never a good sign.
It all starts with a boat. One perfect, little boat – and we’re off! This is a woman on a spending spree. Rockpools is Confessions of a Shopaholic if it was set in Margate and instead of designer clothes, her cryptonite was sea-themed interior decor from any century but her own. Oil paintings of shipwrecks, framed shells, stuffed fish, wooden oars, real fish, twelve tiny porcelain dolphins – she wants it all. She buys it all.
This is majorly affirming my anti-consumerist belief that happy people don’t buy things. This woman is deeply unhappy and is filling her void with sea-themed stuff. Relatable? Sort of. Windlust shows off her character comedy skills with an array of idiosyncratic antique dealers, from the offensively french to the singularly boobed. A hilarious detail. Windlust’s talent for comedy lies in every absurd detail.
The stage is still bare and I’m getting the sense there is going to be no set or props for this show stuffed with stuff, we’ll have to use our imagination. Luckily, Windlust is an intense and earnest storyteller, hilarious and a bit strange. Although I’m a tiny bit disappointed that the stage is so bare in a play all about beautiful clutter. I want to see this Woman actually hammer a buoy into the wall.
I can’t help but think Rockpools would make a beautiful novella or a stunning short film, I’m not sure why it’s a play. Someone get this woman a literary agent. But I’m not complaining, Windlust in safe hands under the co-direction of Gracie Davie and Ivan Hamshaw-Thomas who handle the script like the glass dolphin it is.
Flashback to dinner with the in-laws pre-accident. Main takeaway seems to be that men look hotter when their mouths are full of bread? And posh people say ‘Zalad’ instead of ‘Salad’. The gist being, Woman doesn’t like these rude posh people very much (although her own class is never mentioned, and she takes to the allowance like a duck to water) so why is she marrying one of them? Also more stomach cramps and she’s been bleeding for 6 months straight – girl, go see your doctor.
It’s like watching a grown-up Eloise at the Plaza turn her husband’s dead parent’s bedroom into a grotto. It’s weird, I like it. This is as much a play about inherited wealth as it is about grief.
How cushy to have enough money to be able to grieve lightly, to paper over your health and marriage troubles by building an aquatic escape on a Coots card. However inevitably said house of cards will fall. No one really talks about the money directly in Rockpools, despite the fact this whole play runs on it. But I guess that’s inheritocracy for ya.
The way Windlust staggers between scenes, doubled over and pinching her lower back in such a specific place alerts me to exactly the kind of pain she’s feeling: womb pain.
More seaside bric a brac. A huge tank of tropical fish that she has to feed daily and, the piece de resistance, an 18th century clamshell bed in which she will be the pearl. Fuck yeah, I wanna swan around in silk gown all day pretending to be a pearl. How much money is on this Coot’s card?!? But where is all this stuff going to go? How do you squeeze a whole secret life into one room?
Now I’m starting to think Woman might be a tiny bit mad. Not in a bad way. In a The Yellow Wallpaper way, only this is a self-imposed room arrest. Where on earth is it all going? It’s sad and mad, but it can’t last forever: Man has got to find out eventually. “Guilt tastes like instant ramen”. One of many beautiful lines.
When Man finally discovers the indoor rockpool Woman has built for herself out of maritime bric a brac, his only response is rage and destruction. You’re better off without each other! Get rid! Run! There is no empathy, no curiosity, no attempt at care or connection offered by any of the characters in Rockpools either to themselves or others, just intellect and isolation. This is a world in which no one asks any questions. Maybe because the answer is what no one wants to hear: late stage endometriosis.
A rockpool that should be teeming with life, turns out to be nothing but rock. I know the feeling: it’s a sad, weird, freeing kind of feeling. A heartbreak, yes, but also a relieving of burden. A hand that forces Woman out of the rockpool, along the river, and towards the mouth of the sea. Someone’s trying to heighten my emotional response to this poetic climax cum mixed metaphor by jacking up the volume on an oooh aahh song. Unfortunately, my emotions don’t work that way.
Real sand! Finally! I knew those pockets were going to come in handy.
Recommended drink: A very dirty martini – substitute olive brine for fresh seawater and serve in a conch shell.
Catch Rockpools at Bunker 3 in Pleasance Courtyard from August 9-30 (Not 17, 24) at 15:20 (55mins). Tickets are available through the EdFringe Online Box Office.
Salvador Kent
Shay Mace
