How do you characterize male energy on stage with out replicating the very constructions you wish to problem? The answer in Eve Nicol’s absorbing play is to solid a lady within the function of a domineering man. With slicked-back hair and funky summer time swimsuit, Chloe-Ann Tylor brings a disruptive distance to the character she performs. She is without delay the manipulative patriarch, pushed by some mixture of testosterone and urge to regulate, and one thing else altogether. It's as if her each gesture comes with a query mark, making this highly effective man’s urges appear not solely damaging however unusual.
Tylor is superb. Rooted, bodily exact and sonorous, she portrays the Svengali character who first appeared in Trilby, George Du Maurier’s Nineteenth-century novel. He's now re-imagined by Nicol, who additionally directs, as an formidable modern-day tennis coach. Showing like a hardcore Henry Higgins, bending the world to his will, he picks up Trilby, a younger lady with no obvious expertise within the sport, as a way to break her down, re-programme her and construct her up as a grand-slam champion.
Compliant and hypnotised, Trilby battles her method from the US Open to Wimbledon with the ferocity of a machine. Her coach, working in an unsure space between lust and sadism, feeds on her success regardless that that very success – witness Eliza Doolittle – is what's going to inevitably pull her away from him.
At a time when questions of coercion, exploitation and abuse are being requested in sport, as they've been in vogue and leisure, Nicol’s play makes an attempt to get below the pores and skin of a person bewitched by his personal energy. It feels grimly applicable that Trilby has as little say within the play as she does in her profession.
At Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, till 28 August.
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