The Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond – until 12th November 2022
Reviewed by Bobbi Fenton
5*****
‘The Solid Life of Sugar Water’ is a phenomenal work of art, portraying the raw and intense emotion that comes with losing a baby. Phil (Adam Fenton) and Alice (Katie Erich) tell the story of their whole relationship, through a nonlinear narrative, in unbelievable detail. They describe when they first met, each of their dates, their first kiss, the first time they had sex, and their wedding. Although there is one thing they can’t seem to talk about much. Through being very open and honest with the audience about their relationship and sex life, they create a façade of being completely open and not hiding anything in order to shield their own inability to talk about the baby that they lost. It feels almost like a distraction, by talking about all of their happy memories in a comical way, they manage to trick the audience into thinking that there is nothing wrong. This builds tension up until the very end of the play, and a scene in which Alice and Phil finally manage to talk about that night, without feeling the need to cut each other off with another funny story. In this scene we see a parallel between the two characters, as we see Phil re-enacting and describing the first time they had sex, while we see Alice giving birth to her baby, screaming at the doctors to ‘cut the baby out’.
I have to mention the extremely talented movement director, Isolte Avila. A large amount of the scenes use non-naturalistic movement to represent multiple different things, such as both actors having a tug of war with a bedsheet signifying them having sex, or when Alice is giving birth at the end.
I don’t think there is a single pair of actors I could ever imagine portraying these two characters as perfectly as Adam Fenton and Katie Erich. Every line of the play is projected onto the wall for everybody to read, and yet the lines that are spoken differ slightly from the projected lines. Whether intentional or not, I found this made it much easier to suspend my disbelief as it made it feel a lot more like two real people telling stories about their relationship from memory rather than telling a story they’ve rehearsed over and over. If it weren’t for the lines being projected on the wall, I could believe that this entire show was a work of purely talented improvisation.
This absolutely heartfelt show is a masterpiece, full of brilliantly timed comedy and incredibly well delivered sorrow, portraying the harsh reality of the aftermath of losing a baby.