This play’s title refers to the patches of an MRI scan that indicate multiple sclerosis but Rae Mainwaring’s play crackles with bright places of its own. Based on her experience of having the degenerative condition since she was 23, it is funny as well as reflective, raucous as well as sad.
Tessa Walker’s playful touring production for Carbon Theatre picks up on the youthful energy of the script, winner of a Peggy Ramsay/Film4 award. For the character in Bright Places, MS strikes at a time of dating, dancing and forging a career.
Her new friends in the church hall support group are older and have opted for retirement, whereas she has only a short stint as a wardrobe assistant to her name. She fears MS has cut her off in her prime.
This could be morose, but the show’s tone of post-party comedown is offset by the spirit of twentysomething potential. The streamers scattered over Debbie Duru’s set remind us of up-all-night fun, just as Clive Meldrum’s grungy soundtrack (Garbage, Primal Scream, X-Ray Spex) speaks of noisy rebellion. The young woman is preoccupied by her disorder but not enough to lessen her lust for drink, love and getting ahead.
Mainwaring is a wise enough writer to know that MS is a medical condition not a dramatic dilemma. She says as much in her knowing preamble: this is not a story with an ending or resolution and that, as so often with health-related plays, is a limitation. She does, though, have a keen sense of the theatrical and fields three actors to weave their way fluidly through a story that resists being dragged down.
Lauren Foster is nominally in the lead role, but so too is Aimee Berwick, both of them playing a character called Louise, a stand-in for the author, while Rebecca Holmes switches from doctor to lover to support group leader. They make a lovely ensemble, attuned to a script as physical as it is musical, adding wit and empathy as they go. They are the bright places in a play that is frank about loss yet driven by hope.
