From start to finish, Scaffolding was stagnant, confused, and unenergetic. Marketing for this show made it seem as if it had buckets of potential: a middle-aged mother struggling to navigate the Adult Social Care system, the death of her husband, and her relationship with God and the town’s priest.
An untold and unique story with an underrepresented character. However, from walking into the room with this unsettling choice of psychedelic-like music and Suzanna Hamilton hovering about the scaffolding set in character, it was off-putting and awkward from the get-go.
Scaffolding is a one-woman play where we, the audience, are addressed as God. We are introduced to Sheridan, unfortunately the only character we get to meet. For the next hour, we see her go from sitting on one side of the scaffolding to the other. At one point, she does start doing pull-ups, which provided some variation; however, this lack of movement creates a lack of energy which is not combated by Hamilton’s performance.
Labelling this play as a dark comedy is also misleading, as moments of humour were few and far between. It was more a form of social commentary, possibly an attempt at social realism with the play being inspired by the real-life stories of Lucy Bell’s (the playwright’s) life and community.
During the performance, Hamilton struggled with the dialogue, often repeating lines and stumbling through sections, more bothered about sticking to the script than to any believability. This really took the audience out of the potential immersive qualities of the show. The only part which kept me until the end was the card beneath my seat which said I could only open it at the end. When it was finally revealed what was inside, this led to little payoff. I was almost angry that the whole element of audience interaction only prolonged the show.
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Scaffolding left me feeling nothing but frustrated at having had such high hopes and being completely disappointed.
