Review – BLOW by Jack Silver and Libby Welsh

Blow is a very ambitious play about how poorly minorities are represented in theatre, and in society. It’s a very difficult play to review without spoilers, as the unexpected happens more than once, and revealing it would mean ruining the audience’s experience.

It begins in a burst of energy that is contagious. We are transported in the 1980s, where we find a group of female boxers ready to fight. Their manager, thanks to a loophole he found, is able to organize them a boxing match, even though female boxing is prohibited at the time. The girls move around the stage in fighting mode, and it’s impossible not to draw a comparison with the girls fighting in Glow, the Netflix hit series about female wrestling. We follow the problems, concerns and changes of attitude between the characters as the new girl Hannah, a deaf boxer, makes her entrance into the group. In the mix you can throw every stereotype you can think of: disability, ethnicity, gender. This part of the play is politically incorrect, but it’s clear that what might sound offensive, is there to prove the contrary. This first part is interesting, easy to follow and the audience wants more and more of it.

If the first part of the play is all about female boxing in the 1980s, in the second one, with a coup de theatre, we’re forced to face the unfairness of our own society. There’s a lot happening in this second half, making it a bit hard to follow and leaving the audience unsettled and confused, especially when we move from Glow to  Avenue Q .

To be fair, 20 minutes are not a long time to achieve all the goals and objectives that this play sets for itself at the beginning, and maybe that’s the reason why it feels confusing at times.

It is however a very brave play to write and produce, with some choices that I hope will become regular in theatre in the near future. It’s a play that wants to defeat the stereotypes we see on stage, with an eye on casting that proves that things can be done differently if only there’s the will to do it. It also tries to include all audiences, with an interpreter on the side, translating all that’s being said on stage into sign language.

At the end, with the surprise of audience and cast, we get to know the story of Libby Welsh, who played Hannah in the play. We  learn how a teacher told her very clearly that she was not capable of being an actor. It’s with great joy that we can say that the teacher’s statement was proved very wrong on stage tonight.

Although the second part of the play did not work as well as the first one, it’s a play with potential, that if developed could make some poignant points about diversity in a very clever way.

Blow was presented at #BestLife, at Theatre N16.