Bright Places - Review

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Thu 24 Oct 2024 - Sat 02 Nov 2024

Theatre is a great tool for exploring issues which people can find hard to talk about and Bright Places is an example of how effective it can be.

The show tells the story of Louise who is just out of university when she begins to feel tingling and weakness in her limbs and heads off to her doctor for an explanation. Written by Rae Mainwaring, Bright Places is based on her own experiences of being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at the age of 23.



The production is more a series of glimpses of her early responses to the diagnosis, the symptoms and the effect on her life than a clear narrative as we weave in and out of experiences she shares.

There’s the initial diagnosis in which she fails to take on board much of what is being said. There is the support group where she realizes she is so much younger than all the other people in the room and the only shared ground is their health condition. We see the boyfriend who is totally blasé about it all and the friend who takes time to listen.

The kaleidoscopic nature of the storytelling is reflected in a pulsing soundtrack of nineties music with tracks by bands including Primal Scream and Garbage and also Kylie Minogue. With Mainwaring diagnosed in 2004, these are the club tracks forming the background to the life of a young woman in her early twenties who should be raving with her friends not raging at her condition.

Mainwaring is brutally honest in her responses to the diagnosis taking us through a range of emotions from despair to intense anger. Here is a life and all its plans suddenly sent off kilter and the play delves into how someone copes with such a dramatic shift.

Presented by Carbon Theatre in association with Birmingham Rep and directed by Tessa Walker, the show runs to just over an hour and it’s a pretty intense piece of theatre. That’s not to say there’s not plenty of humour not least between the three actors all vying to play the main character Louise.

Lauren Foster, Aimee Berwick and Rebecca Holmes all play facets of Louise/Rae while also swapping and changing into all the secondary roles including health professionals, friends and the boyfriend.



Performed in The Door at Birmingham Rep, the production makes use of a minimal physical set but some digital effects and features creative captions.

In the final scene, the axis shifts again and we come forward 20 years to where the Louise/Rae character is today. While it brings the story into the present day and gives us an injection of hope it is also quite a sudden jump and in some ways feels out of context when so many loose ends are still untied from the previous stories.

We’re left wondering so did the boyfriend last and are the occasional references to children proof that she has found love somewhere? How has the condition changed during the last 20 years? And what brought about this seemingly sudden acceptance?

The Bright Places of the title refers to the scarring that MS causes on the brain but it could also refer to those moments when the character finds joy in life despite all the obstacles. With its upfront and honest depiction of a young woman struggling with a painful diagnosis and its consequences on her life, Bright Places also hopefully turns a spotlight onto the subject helping to increase understanding and open up discussion.

At Birmingham Rep until 2 Nov, see here for more information and tickets.

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