When I get to the theater, they’re already sitting on the stage as they were in my daymare. Legs swinging over the edge. Faces shining but unreadable. Mutinous? Maybe. Hard to tell. Still, they’re here. They each appear to be holding a copy of All’s Well (my director’s cut) — that’s something. They haven’t torched them in a communal burning. Yet. That’s something too. Third rehearsal. They have already formed vague alliances in accordance with the social hierarchy and are sitting in their respective clumps. Not smiling. Not frowning. Waiting. Just staring with their young eyes that think they see.
Miranda Fitch was a rising star of live theatre when a tumble from the stage left her with debilitating chronic pain that an endless string of surgeons, physiotherapists, and alternative healers have been unable to alleviate. No longer physically able to perform, at the suggestion of her (now ex) husband, Miranda applied to become a Professor at a small New England college (where her duties include teaching three Drama courses per semester and directing the annual Shakespeare play), and five years into this job, Miranda’s pain is crippling, she has alienated herself from the few friends she had made, and her students neither respect or trust her. When Miranda decides to mount All’s Well That Ends Well as this year’s production (the “problem play” in which she herself had once shone in the role of Helen at the Edinburgh Fringe) — despite the students
All’s Well seems set in the same surreal universe as Mona Awad’s last novel, Bunny — the decrepit campus, the cliquey students, the possibility for magic — and for all the reasons that I loved the former, I loved this one, too. My brain sizzled with frisson as I read this; Awad writes straight to the pleasure centres of my own brain (and I will preemptively and whole-heartedly acknowledge that this is a highly personal aesthetic experience; this won’t work for everyone). Further, Awad elevates this beyond a purely pleasurable reading experience by using this fantastical storyline to examine feminist issues: a woman’s power linked to her health and beauty; the jealousies and cattiness that cause women to subvert one another; the male-dominated health care system that tells women their problems are in their heads if they can’t fix them. And I should note that Awad isn’t pushy with these themes: Miranda is filled with self-pity, you can see why people shrink from her, and for all we know, her problems are all in her head; but that doesn’t make her less human or less worthy of empathy.
I’ll still have to teach for the health insurance. They’ll wheel me into the theater like the ailing King. My body burning like a star, like a planet of mercury. Pull over. Just pull over now to this dark cold shoulder of the earth, hit the brakes on the gravelly ice. Take the pills rattling in your pockets. Won’t matter which pills from which pockets. Just swallow. Swallow them down. Swallow them all down, why not? Be done with it. Close my eyes. Stare at the dark behind my lids so heavy, just as starless. My breathing will slow. Everything will slow. The silence will sound like music. Forget my broken body once and for all. Cold won’t feel cold anymore. Nothing. I’ll feel nothing. Let the dark be the Dark. Enter the real Night. Not here though. Not here on this loveless New England road. Ice still on the windshield. Trucks roaring past like laughing devils. I think of that golden drink. What did they call it again? The golden remedy. How it made me glow from the inside, how it made a blue sky of my body. The three men at the bar. The middling man seeing my pain, seeing all. One more drink. One more drink for the road, why not?
After about the third chapter, with Miranda thinking and talking at length about the play she wants to mount, I decided to read All’s Well That Ends Well; and while knowing the plot, characters, and key scenes from the play did make everything more clear, it’s not strictly necessary. On the other hand, some knowledge of Shakespeare is valuable — from recognising the name “Miranda” to being wary of a grouping of three hunched figures who offer potions and visions; dreams granted always come with a price.
Am I supposed to feel guilty? That I feel fine for once? That I’m not limping and moaning around? Lying on the floor, crying into my ears while everyone else around me rolls their eyes? I’m supposed to feel bad that I’m better now? I’m supposed to cry over a little cut. To what? To make you feel like I’m not a monster. I need to perform my little bit of pain for you so you’ll know I’m human? But not too much pain, am I right? Not too much, never too much. If it was too much, you wouldn’t know what to do with me, would you? Too much would make you uncomfortable. Bored. My crying would leave a bad taste. That would just be bad theater, wouldn’t it? A bad show. You want a good show. They all do. A few pretty tears on my cheeks that you can brush away. Just a delicate little bit of ouch so you know there’s someone in there. So you don’t get too scared of me, am I right? So you know I’m still a vulnerable thing. That I can be brought down if need be.
(Note: I did edit this passage from a dialogue to a soliloquy.) A potion, a ballad, a meaningful touch and Miranda seems cured of her phantom pains. The plot goes from curious to curiouser, but no matter how surreal the circumstances become, Awad uses the events to explore women’s experiences in a way that felt entirely truthful and relatable. I loved the whole thing.
