Review by Kate Gaul
This production is the world premiere of an award nominated play exploring what grief, fear and resilience are for a young black woman who fears the water. Playwright Somebody Jones received a Paines Plough Playwright Fellowship 2023 and was a Women’s Prize Finalist 2021 with this play. “How I learned to Swim” is her debut play.It’s an amazing debut play.
This is a solo performance in the Roundabout Theatre at Summerhall. Performed by Frankie Hart presenting a wide canvas of characters from her central character, Jamie, to the tough swimming coach, horrible childhood friends and a loving family.
Jamie is 30 and cannot swim. Why? There was that incident back in her childhood that instilled her with a powerful dread of diving into the water, not to mention the stereotype that Black people can’t swim. In “How I learned to Swim” we experience one woman’s swimming lessons and an expansive (and often unknown) world of aquatic Black history and myth. The play switches between the youth and adulthood of reluctant swimmer Jamie, who is haunted by her brother’s disappearance. Jamie’s encounters with her instructor and a spiritual guide are placed against a backdrop of history - including the “Middle Passage” of the transatlantic slave trade, the watery Afrofuturist world of American musicians Drexciya and the despicable legacy of segregated swimming pools in the US. So, this is much more than a play about learning to swim. It also explores inherited biases, grief and the importance of pursuing closure.
The setting is the edge of a pool and the combination of blues and greens in the art finish, the chrome ladder handle and the story of the play are extremely evocative. You can really smell the chlorine! The scenes are punctuated with imaginatively tingling sounds of waves, drips and water. Our suspension of disbelief Is complete in that we often believe Jamie is actually floating in water whether it is in the pool or at the beach.
Swimming brings Jamie an increased sense of independence but playwright Somebody Jones emphasises the essentially communal properties of water itself, which will support Jamie if she has faith when easing herself into it.
This is a compelling and dense piece of theatre. As a debut play it has incredible depth Humour abounds, and Frankie Hart’s performance is charming if a bit shouty. It may sound like it’s good for you but it delivers its powerful political messages in a character driven work.
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