#11: Adaptations - little scratch

from page to stage

I did say it wasn’t all doom and gloom with theatre currently.

At the start of the year, Rebecca Watson’s debut novel little scratch was released. It’s a sparse and spacey novel, charting a Friday in the life of an assistant at a newsroom, who is coming to terms with a recent sexual assault.

By November, it had been adapted for the stage and was on at the Hampstead Theatre. It’s a turnaround you can’t really get in another medium: film and tv would require too many people and locations; musicals involve too many moving parts, which is in part why I think there aren’t very many ‘timely’ musicals.

And it’s a good show and adaptation at that. Miriam Battye’s script is less online than the trains of thought that preoccupy the protagonist during the novel (on one occasion, she thinks of a line that would be good to tweet, which I think would be weird to articulate on stage, particularly at the Hampstead) but the humour is there. What’s interesting is that there’s a power to the vocalising of the trauma the character is processing that is almost stifling in a studio: I have never heard the word ‘rape’ so many times in my life. It’s a lot, almost too much? But that is the point.

In terms of direction and design, this is a team that understands that good doesn’t require a set piece: yes, there’s sound elements done by the cast of four, and the lighting is relatively sparse. But it’s so powerful: the meditative reflection as the evening closes.

Splitting one voice into four actors was a rogue move but it actually paid off: I think without a cast, it would have been a bit ‘live artists sit at desk’ when I’ve found that I’ve loved being able to commune with a company. I’ve missed that.