People, Places and Things at Trafalgar Theatre

“Truth is difficult when your job is to lie for a living,” so utters Emma (Denise Gough) in Jeremy Herrin’s mesmerising staging of Duncan Macmillan’s People, Places and Things. Back for a limited 14-week run, with Gough reprising her role from the original 2015 production, Herrin creates a multisensory experience that fuses frenetic set pieces with the profundities of the written word.

Gough gives a harrowing performance as Emma, an out-of-work actress in the throes of an existential crisis. Drink and drugs provide the only semblance of stability in her life, which she deems an incessant death march into inevitable nothingness. Seeking some form of redemption through in-patient treatment, Emma’s very existence in rehab is a kind of performance in itself. Initially unwilling to confront her own reality, she borrows from literary works in fashioning a persona more palatable to her fellow patients, particularly the charming Mark, played by the exemplary Malachi Kirby. While engaging in this fantasist role, Emma often breaks the fourth wall, urging the audience to ruminate on the performative nature of the everyday.

Herrin’s staging is a sensory nightmare; the audience is plunged into darkness with Emma, as Matthew Herbert’s discordant, industrial-style score reverberates through the theatre. A powerhouse performance by Gough encapsulates the visceral reality of withdrawal; symbolised by myriad doppelgangers who take to the stage, Emma’s sense of self is constantly fragmented while her body – in writhing agony – adjusts to its newfound, sober existence. Flitting between frantic interpretive dance and resonant soliloquies, Gough’s indefatigable physicality on stage is extraordinary to witness.

A terrifyingly realistic portrayal of substance misuse, People, Places and Things humanises those most downtrodden in society. At a time when individuals suffering from mental illness are being demonised by those in the highest echelons of power, used as scapegoats and pawns in the Conservative government’s increasingly merciless culture war, the play is a heartfelt plea for compassion. When Emma laments that there are wars going on in the world, her illness supposedly trivial in comparison, one can’t help but be reminded of the kind of reactionary, finger-wagging rhetoric used to minimise the severity of addiction, and, indeed, any mental illness. People, Places and Things is an outstanding – and sobering – meditation on the demons dormant in everyone.

Antonia Georgiou
Images: Marc Brenner

People, Places and Things is at Trafalgar Theatre until 10^th August 2024. For further information or to book visit the theatre’s website here.