Skin opens with Sadie (played by Juliette Imbert) learning that she has Stage 2 melanoma. Suddenly, her picnics in the sunshine over the weekends are replaced with hospital appointments where she is constantly prodded with needles, bombarded with medical jargon and berated for not following doctors’ orders.
Director Peter Todd cleverly depicts her scans with sequences choreographed to the whirring of an MRI machine as the nurses shine very bright strobe lights on the detachment of the medical staff who treat Sadie as yet another cancer patient focusing only on her physical symptoms.
In between hospital appointments, we see Sadie unsuccessfully juggling her job. Her boss Simon (played by Cosimo Asviso) is focussed on promoting wellbeing in the workplace, but we soon learn that is limited to offering digestive biscuits to staff and does not extend to allowing Sadie time to adjust to her challenging diagnosis.
While Skin revolves around Sadie, her true personality is kept at bay. Sadie flirts with frustration and brushes against fear but her emotional journey is linear at best. The crowd is sympathetic, but the play fails to capture the full essence of the roller coaster of emotions that comes with dealing with a life altering condition.
In her conversations with her friend, Jill (played by Am Wyckoff) and sister, Klara (played by Elise Busset) we get a glimpse of her sense of humour but that is fleeting. We know nothing of her ambitions, values or experiences.
Sadie shares her grievance at how she is so much more than her cancer, but the audience remains unconvinced as her character lacks any real progression, nuance and introspection. In a poignant moment, Sadie moves to the middle of the stage and breaking the third wall, says: “I don’t want to be an inspiration or a burden. I just want to exist.” Ironically, that’s exactly what she does.
Skin plays at the Jack Studio until 5 August 2023.
