
Collapsible
3.5 (2) · New Writing, Contemporary Drama
I’ll tell you what I really want. I want to jump clean out of my brain.
Overview
Essie’s lost her job. Her girlfriend’s left. But she’s alright. Except lately she feels more like a chair than a person. One of those folding chairs. Solid one minute. And then.
From award-winning Irish writer Margaret Perry (Porcelain, Abbey Theatre), Collapsible is a funny, furious new monologue about holding on in this collapsing world. For anyone who has ever felt crumbly.
Winner of the Origins Award for Outstanding New Work, VAULT Festival 2019.
Critic reviews
A terrifically natural, nuanced performance, finding warmth in a show that could have felt just glum
On display like a bust in a museum, Breffni Holahan is superb in this Beckettian monologue by Margaret Perry
The perfect insight into the mind of someone afraid to jump, unable to know if there's anything solid waiting to meet them
Articulates the horrors of melancholia with singular brilliance
A troublingly realistic study of mental health
Hypnotically performed play about one woman’s gradually unravelling
Holahan is heart-breaking, the writing flinty and rich, and if the final few minutes don’t quite hit home, this captures the dislocating sense of watching the world continue to turn while you feel as if you are disappearing
And overall, this is a great production, because Holahan's brilliant performance carries it strongly in its weakest moments