Miss You – Dublin Fringe Festival – Review
by Frank L.

Miss You – Written by Venetia Bowe and Fionnuala Gygax

Image Credit: Laura Sheeran

Three friends, Hannah (Fionnuala Gygax), Roisin (Venetia Bowe) and Nat (Maria Oxley Boardman), gather to make a film under Hannah’s direction. They are driven to do so by the unsolved disappearance of their friend Isabelle ten years earlier. All four women had been out together that night, but Isabelle never made it home. In making the film, they draw on Greek mythology, imagining that Isabelle may have been abducted by some shadowy figure whom they call, appropriately, Hades, the ancient Greek god of the underworld, where the dead are said to reside.

After a time, they are joined on set by Isabelle’s mother, Dee (Una Kavanagh), a woman of a certain age who arrives carrying a homemade Victorian cream sponge cake. Hannah has not told the other two that she invited Dee, and her unexpected arrival exacerbates the underlying tensions between the three friends. All four women are haunted by the inexplicable disappearance, and all they have left is their memory of that fateful night, which they attempt to reconstruct in every last detail.

The set is a rudimentary film studio, with various pieces of equipment and props accumulated on either side of the stage. At its centre is a floor-to-ceiling drape, which is used at intervals as a screen onto which images from the filming are projected.

Apart from the text, the production is also highly physical. In one memorable scene, Roisin is rolled across the stage floor, bound in fine gauze like an Egyptian mummy. In another, the women recreate the party they attended on that fateful night.

The performances from all four actors are first-rate, with Kavanagh creating a very different dynamic as Isabelle’s mother from that established between the three friends. Her perspective is distinct, and the production observes these differing viewpoints with considerable thoughtfulness.

The production is inspired by the public silence that surrounds the unexplained disappearance of young women. In any particular case, discussion can be painful for those directly involved, and silence consequently becomes the norm. Miss You seeks to break that silence.

It is an impressive and thought-provoking production: a serious piece of theatre on every level.