The Hundred We Are, the Yard Theatre

By Eva Jackson

The Hundred We Are anthropomorphises psychic apparatus with poetry, and it just might show you a bit of yourself.

Jonas Hassen Khemiri's The Hundred We Are is a piece that eludes easy definition. It is surreal, playful and quietly devastating. It is about the multiplicity of the individual, the unreliable nature of memory, the lies that we tell ourselves in order to keep on keeping on, and the constant and lingering appeal of the road not taken.

The Hundred We Are sees three actresses tell the story of one woman's life - or rather, many versions of the story of one woman's life. There is 1 (Ida Bonnast) - the cherubic-looking but tempestuous and conflicted teenage self; 2 (Katherine Manners) - the neurotic and try-hard mother, wife and dental hygienist; and 3 (Karen Archer) - sardonic, elusive and the most mature incarnation of our nameless protagonist. They squabble and shout, cry and cajole, criticize and commiserate from the top of the play to the end, trying to sort out the shards of truth from the lies they have told themselves and each other.

It is a striking device to people a show with the multiple identities of a single entity, but it is not a new one. I was particularly reminded of Helen Cooper's deft and accomplished Three Women and a Piano Tuner. In Three Women, the eighteen year old protagonist Elizabeth falls pregnant unexpectedly, and the trauma of the options before her causes her to fracture into three different versions of self: one who keeps the baby, one who gives it up for adoption, and one who has a termination. Later in the play, these selves reconvene, and compare and defend and envy and judge one another's choices and subsequent paths in life, and we are never certain which Elizabeth made the right decision. Three Women is a delicately crafted play, following a structure that is informed by the piano concerto at its heart.

The Hundred We Are is a much more wild and sprawling beast. The action of the play is bookended by two collective suicide attempts, and everything in between is a bazaar and rummage of daydreams and falsehoods and recollections as the women attempt to pin down the special 'gold-framed memories' that make will make life worth surviving. Time is an elastic concept here. They spend twenty minutes or more arguing over whether or not they spoke to the handsome stranger on the train (or shared a night of passion with him , or whether he even ever existed it all), but their decision to train as a dental hygienist instead of becoming a political revolutionary happens within the blink of an eye. Any attempt to impose a chronology or narrative structure of any kind is bootless, and the audience quickly surrender to the vibrant maelstrom of the women's thoughts and the unique lyricism of Khemiri's writing (translated masterfully by Frank Perry).

Ida Bonnast is wonderful as the boundlessly energetic and id-ridden 1. She has a highly compelling stage presence and finds a perfect balance between petulant defiance and heartbreaking vulnerability. Katherine Manners gives an accomplished and nuanced performance as the uptight and mercurial 2, although I did wonder if she was perhaps slightly too fresh-faced to provide sufficient contrast between Bonnast as 1 and the graceful Karen Archer as the older and wiser 3. Archer is also tasked with representing the key men in the women's life, a device which benefits from a pleasingly understated and subtle touch. The Hundred We Are is a constant battle for power and authority - the interplay between the women is the show. Director Jamie Harper has assembled a tightly-knit trio of actors who have a pleasing chemistry and share a good understanding of the necessary rhythms and pace of the piece.

I had thought that this show might be an exploration of gender and the multiple roles of modern womanhood - one written by a man and directed by another man. Indeed, there are questions raised about motherhood, about burgeoning female sexuality, about the little-discussed issue of being forced into non-consensual sex within a long-term relationship. But these are almost incidental features of their story. The play is not so much about female identity as it is about identity in general, the struggle to achieve harmony of self. Each character offers the version of events that best suit her and offer her the easiest coping strategy, trying to reconcile 'the fear of being different' with 'the fear of being ordinary'. It interrogates the idea of the folly of youth vs. the wisdom of experience - the nature of a trio of characters means that there is always a victim, and here it is most frequently 1 being bullied and goaded by 2 and 3. We recognise 1's immaturity, we understand that she lies and that her real grasp of the political ideologies that she claims to espouse is sketchy at best. But we also see that her aggressors are jealous of her youth, jealous of her imagination and freedom and optimism. They resent the choices that they made - or didn't make - when they were her, and the path that lead them to the abject unhappiness that now consumes them. It is a set of ideas that is universal, terrifying, and inevitable.

Design must be a daunting concept when the brief is essentially an entire interior life which may or may not feature world travel, a national conference, and a train. Florence McHugh has risen to this challenge by constructing a clean, simple and modern set from little more than whitewashed blocks and scaffolding, complemented by projected abstract video footage that is used sparingly and effectively. The industrial quality of this aesthetic sits well in The Yard, which a tricky space to design for, but is quickly becoming one of my favourite fringe venues. It is an exposed and exposing space for performers and audience alike, and Hobo Theatre use this to their advantage, as one might expect from a company that makes a virtue of performing in unconventional spaces. Harper has directed his cast to inhabit it comfortably and completely, and moments of personal appeal from each of the characters are enhanced by direct audience address.

I spent much of the performance conducting frustrated amateur detective work. I was constantly trying to discern the overlapping lies from the truth, the real memories from the imagined ones. I wanted to work out the definitive story of the woman whose life we were being shown. It wasn't until afterwards that I realised that to care so fiercely about trying to whittle away the excess information was to entirely miss the point. It didn't matter that I didn't know, because every version of events was necessary for the survival of each incarnation of the woman that we saw. Every one of us holds these conflicting multiple identities inside us, each of us is a tissue of doubts and regrets and second-guessing ourselves. This play was first performed in 2009, and this is a timely revival, living as we are at the height of the popular modern affliction of FOMO (fear of missing out), worrying that everyone else is surpassing us at the task of living life. It is a tall order to try and capture the essence of something that everyone is an expert in, but Jonas Hassen Khemiri and Hobo Theatre have made it as easy as 1, 2, 3.

@postscriptjour

The Hundred We Are runs until 8th November at The Yard Theatre in Hackney.

Performances start at 8PM

Tickets are £15 (£12.50 concessions)

http://www.theyardtheatre.co.uk/

Production photograph courtesy of Mark Douet.

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