Red Like Fruit: articulating what "no-one" wants to hear
01 Jun 2025 - Photos by Dahlia Katz

Two actors walk on to a stage dominated by a simple straight back chair spotlit  on a riser. Lauren, Michelle Monteith (The Father), tells us that "I have asked Luke to speak for me." Luke, David Patrick Flemming (A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, What a Young Wife Out to Know), has notes on a stand but he only refers to them when he gets nervous. Lauren walks around the riser to the stairs in the back and sits in the chair. She is simultaneously in a position of power, being on a pedestal and having written the text Luke is to perform, and pinned like a exhibit or an interrogation suspect by the spotlight. Luke begins to tell us of Lauren's visit to a support group to deal with a "growing sense of unease." He is animated and conversational, she is still, listening as intently as the audience. At times she mimes the actions described but mostly she is as still and a mixture of defiant and meek. The text continues to describe Lauren's comfortable life with a loving husband and two children. She is a journalist and she is currently working on a piece probing into a scandal involving what is, depending on the viewpoint, an unfortunate physical lashing out or an act of violent sexual domestic violence. Lauren interviews several people involved or who witnessed the event or aftermath, and it triggers a memory of an event from her past.

Part of the genius of Red Like Fruit is the slow, intense peeling away of the layers of what is the plot. Any description would be a spoiler of the careful construction. Playwright Hannah Moscovitch (Fall On Your Knees, Post-Democracy, Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes, Old Stock, What a Young Wife Ought to Know, Bunny) is wrestling with point of view, with a particular curiosity about the difference between an incident and a trauma. The interviewees all have variations on the severity of the "slap" or domestic violence, Lauren herself is deeply conflicted about her complicity in the cover up of her own experience. She has treated it jokingly, tried to forget, and has let it fester into the unease that is plaguing her. Both plot threads deal explicitly with the difference between the way women and men deal with incidents or trauma. Lauren describes one of the men she interviews as "someone who is used to being listened to." Despite being a journalist, Lauren is not sure she has a similar voice. There is a huge inequality in the way voices are treated, hence having Luke speak for her. Hearing it from a male voice gives it enough authority for her to try to puzzle it out.

Luke is animated and solicitous. He frequently asks Laruen if he should go on. When Lauren has a question she politely interjects with "I'm sorry to interrupt." Requesting permission to add to or elucidate her own story. Moscovitch begins gently, peppering the text with one-liners that had the opening night audience laughing heartily until realization hit, and the laughs had to be swallowed. Moscovitch knows exactly how to puncture upper middle class liberalism and male pomposity. The atmosphere grows more and more uncomfortable as the fourth wall is erased and we are drawn into the intense intimacy and unease between the two. Drawn between the lines of the text. Director Christian Barry (Old Stock, We Are Not Alone, What a Young Wife Ought to Know) keeps the action minimal with only Flemming allowed, initially, any movement or gestures. Monteith is eerily still so that we focus on even her most imperceptible motions, emotions, always aware that she is a polite powder keg. A volcano that will not allow itself to erupt simply because she is not sure she has the right to. 

We are always off balance, pursing the words, trying to figure out the relationship between the characters, and denied even the most minimal of theatrical clues. The lighting design of Kaitlin Hickey plays with spotlighting and dimming for emphasis. Flemming steps out of the spotlight the first time he breaks the fourth wall but from there on in, our eyes are directed and misdirected, there are confusing points of view. The text asks us to consider many things from the male/female imbalance to degrees of consent, or if there are even degrees. In one very telling passage, Moscovitch asks what is the difference between non-consensual sex, sex that is regretted, and "sex that you regret as you're having it." Lauren and her journalism subject are confused and penalized over not having specifically said "no" even though it was more than implied. Moscovitch raises more questions than she answers and they stick in the mind, evoke more questions, and undoubtedly vary with different audience members. Lauren's unease is caused by repression, unless it was after all just an incident. She asks, "Why struggle to articulate something no-one wants to hear anyway?" We should all be grateful that Moscovitch makes us listen.

What struck me as we left the theatre just as A Strange Loop, playing next door, also let out. The two audiences a stark contrast, us deep in thought, the A Strange Loop audience chattering away. While Moscovitch was dealing with specifically female oppression by diving internally and thoughtfully questioning motivations, being careful to see both sides while excusing neither; Jackson has taken his repressed anger and flung it on the stage in song and dance, naming names but also taking responsibility. The black and gay option: sing it out and shove it in their faces. Both messy, both valid, and both haunting long after the curtain calls.