Review: Silkworm
Life is different on the 17th floor. The elasticity of the building fabric feels quite unlike that experienced on the 1st or 2nd floors. At this height, it bleeds into daily existence. It facilitates views normally afforded only to gulls but at the parallel 55.8 and the meridian -4.2 (an intersection better known as Glasgow) the proximity to an unleavened sky bows heads and lies heavy on souls. Its deleterious effects, imperceptible by all but the newly arrived, is worn as a coat amongst locals for whom this is but the tapestry of life. Indeed, if gravitational extremities connote any religious sense of place at all, then it is observed…this heaven rains. Heavily. Some bear crosses. Glaswegians bear clouds…a spritz of water enough to dampen (but not snuff out) the joy of life. These are the perfect conditions for black humour. The oil to grease the grinding day. The genius of Vlad Butucea’s Silkworm is we see the genesis of that.
Silkworm tells the story of two asylum seekers, Abidemi and Omolade, as they await the verdict of the Home Office on their application for UK residency. Like a metal undergoing heat treatment, that department quenches and tempers the aegis of their relationship. There are exquisite moments of dramaturgy to convey the claustrophobia of place, and the accompanying stasis that arrives when all routes to self-determination lead through the airless halls of the Home Office. The stress that comes with the lack of self-agency eats through the perception of all else to isolate one thing…the one thing that brought them to this place at this time…the one thing they have to prove: their love for one another. Now vulnerable to the monotonic advance of bureaucratic administration, that love is repeatedly rinsed through for traces of logic. Love and logic have no business appearing in the same sentence together. And yet, not only have they to quantify their love, they must also normalise it with their personal experiences so that not a shred of daylight escapes during interviews with the Home Office. Hermetically sealed within their lugubrious flat, over slices of pan bread toast smeared with value-brand marmalade, Abidemi and Omolade start the process of aligning their stories via video diary. Butucea forefronts the absurdity of it all as it tests you with its questions: How do you feel love? From where does it spring when you are touched? How often do you have sex? And how certain are you that that spectrum of sexuality which does not resonate with you…how certain can you be that it never will? All of this recorded as you transfer your weight from one numb buttock to the other on account of an uncomfortable wooden chair. Or could that be your body leaking truth, distancing itself from the words your mouth speaks? Whatever. The only truth that counts is the one that is delivered in a sealed brown envelope.
The dramaturgy deployed by director Mojisola Elufowoju is mesmerising as it manifests the detrimental effects on the protagonists of the depressingly drawn-out process favoured by the Home Office. The soundscape - the acoustics of space - further lays bare their inner torment. The logic of love turns out to be the memory of it. It is no small feat to maintain a taut narrative pace in a two-hander lasting 75 minutes. However, in the company of the beautiful performances by Ewa Dina and Antonia Layiwola (supported by Elufowoju and Butucea), the time spent watching the play feels inversely proportional to the time the two women must spend in their flat awaiting word of their future.
Humorous, with a beautiful light-touch poetical style, Silkworm is as beguiling and haunting a piece of theatre as ever you’ll see.
Silkworm runs two more nights at Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh.