Lowkey Dying shows some potential at Clapham’s Omnibus Theatre
”I felt like there was no past, and no future, and I was just a warm ball of silence”
The upstairs space at the Omnibus Theatre is a new one for me, making further use of this converted library to create a très bijou studio theatre for this Clapham venue. The payoff is that directors need to work carefully to utilise its potential effectively, something that doesn’t always happen here.
Heather O’Sullivan’s Lowkey Dying focuses on Louise, a dental receptionist who, from an online perspective, seems to have her life as sorted as the rows of apps on her smartphone. Offline though, in real life, there are hints that all is not as Instagram-filtered-perfection as all that.
What we see is Louise’s own heavily filtered perception of reality – difficult relationships with colleagues who don’t have any problem with her, matches on Hinge which never live up to expectations – and the deep sense of loneliness that permeates her life, whether she sees it or not.
Wrtiter and performer OSullivan populates this world and its supporting characters with real texture, ensuring we’re often hooked in, as this does come at the zero-sum expense of more time investigating Louise as a character. This is exacerbated by direction that frequently hides the main character due to poorly considered sightlines.
