Jellyfish – by Alice Malseed and Sarah Baxter

Review by Frank L.

Alice Malseed is of the generation who graduated just in time to get the full frontal blast of the international banking collapse which consumed, and still consumes, western capitalism. She is from Belfast but she attended college in London. She starts straight into that world of sharing a tumbledown house with two others, paying the rent by means of doing a succession of minimum wage jobs in order to be able to just hang in. She appears physically small and almost petite at one level but a blue, quiet enough, tattoo on each arm makes you aware inside this frame there is another more rebellious force.

She starts by describing her post-graduate life, sharing in London and she traverses backwards to childhood events in her native city of Belfast. She wears a simple, demure, sleeveless dress and her monologue is delivered in a precise, very finely enunciated voice. The pace of the delivery is even throughout so there is a somewhat mesmeric effect as the various happenings in her life are recounted.  But the events she describes regularly have a raw edge and there is no doubt as to the toughness of the life her generation have to endure after the collapse.

The principal prop is a small silvered bench which she moves around the stage; she also has about a dozen paper cups and a small tube of silver glitter. So Alice Malseed relies on her own inner strength to get her stories across which with a nice sense of quirkiness, she seasons with humour. Her careful enunciation cleverly lifts the facts which she recounts onto a higher and lighter plane and what could be overwhelmingly grim is transformed into a story of some considerable contemporary relevance.

Jellyfish – by Alice Malseed and Sarah Baxter

Dates Sep 06 – 11 @ 14:00.
Tickets €12 / €10 conc.
Duration 50 mins.
Venue: Project Arts Centre Cube