Review: ACT OF GOD at Riverside Studios

O’Connor presents a vulnerable portrayal of a working-class young man whose darkest fears and insecurities are patched over with charisma, swearing, and jokes. There’s an engaging chemistry with Lucy Blott who plays a contrasting role: the calm and controlled NHS therapist who introduces her patient to a ‘healing through rhyme’ course in which he must write poems as a form of self-discovery and acceptance. This provides an effective structure for the 60-minute piece, creating a sense of order amongst the play’s chaos as well as potential for the protagonist’s progress.

Directed by Sean Turner, Act of God is at times heartwrenching and desperate, at others, witty and evasive. The cast are adept at quickly shifting between moods, providing the audience with moments of funniness in which to breathe before catching them off-guard with the next sucker punch to the heart. Blott is impressive in her ability to shift between roles, signalling another persona through nuanced changes in voice and demeanor which make scenes clear without veering into overkill. The intimate setting allows for a chilling viscerality as well as mimicking the awkward physical closeness of a therapy session. I particularly enjoyed the use of light and sound to indicate flashbacks. The sequence of garbled memories is hesitant in its claim to veracity, conveying the way reality can interact with recollection and the danger of burying the truth as we repeatedly replay scenes in our mind’s eye.

This piece of new writing is not just able to conjure complex and captivating characters, but presents a gripping plot that kept me intrigued throughout. Audiences do not have their hands held and are, instead, left to fill in the blanks themselves with clues scattered along the way like a Hansel and Gretel trail. Like the fairy tale duo, we feel the urge to seek comfort, resolution, and clarity in certain aspects of the story. Ultimately, leaning into the play’s most disconcerting elements is the only option.

O’Connor is skilled in his ability to cover a wide range of poignant issues in this fast-paced two-hander. One feels that his writing comes from the heart as he examines the pressures young men face, especially that of being a parent or partner who protects and provides without falling into the trap of becoming the very monster he guards against. He exhibits impressive range and delivers a beautifully raw and emotionally charged performance. It’s a play about selfhood, denial, and the blurred line between victim and perpetrator that can be so knotted and hard to disentangle. The attempt to disentangle is what the play is interested in and it succeeded in making the rest of the audience incredibly interested too.