Review: Near Miss at the Unity Theatre ****

The Unity is currently celebrating its rich cultural and political heritage. But while looking back, it’s worth noting it’s the ongoing commitment to supporting and nurturing new writing which remains central to its programme in the here and now.

This includes Near Miss, the second in the ‘Watching Windows’ trilogy of semi-autobiographical works by Liverpool teacher, actor, director and latterly playwright Helena Rand.

The first, Rotten Apple, a story of love, ambition and a search for self and based on her experiences as a young woman in 1990s New York, was premiered at the Hope Place venue last December, and I understand the final part of the triptych which features her protagonist in middle age is set to be staged at the theatre this winter.

They are all, though, apparently standalone pieces so it doesn't matter if you haven't seen each one, or in order.

Near Miss, the middle child of the family as it were, is a challenging one-woman story which also explores identity, albeit here as much about the loss of self as self-discovery.

It’s Liverpool 2005 (the pre-Capital of Culture ‘Year of the Sea’ – and year, too, of triumph in Istanbul) and Korina Kelly (Samantha Alton) is teaching English to lads in a city school, coaxing the gauche and the gobby to present reasoned arguments about and critiques of literary and poetic works and devices.

First impressions are of a cheerfully ditzy woman juggling career and motherhood who can never find her keys but knows her way around Shelley’s love poetry and exudes a calm, authoritative but encouraging aura at the flip board.

But slowly we become aware that there’s a looming and deepening shadow over her life outside the classroom – which it appears isn’t just a place of work but also a space of sanctuary and relative normalcy.

Korina’s seemingly fond tales of sunny Italian family holidays have a bitter tinge, daily hiccups like forgotten school pick-ups and missing dinner money take on a darker resonance, an intrusively repetitive ringing mobile sparks an adrenalin rush of anxiety and fear, and what seems to be a warm, self-deprecating first-person musing of life’s sliding doors morphs into a hellish tale of escalating abuse, coercive control and crushing shame.

Above and top: Samantha Alton plays Korina Kelly in Near Miss. Photos by Jennifer Vaudrey.

Rand avoids black and white narrative options to explore the more complex reality for someone trapped in such a situation, and Near Miss ends with Korina’s future still an unresolved shade of grey. Perhaps we’ll have to wait for the final part of the trilogy for that.

Alton (frontwoman to a practically all-female creative team, from producer and director to lighting designer and stage manager) gives a tour-de-force performance as a woman who finds herself somehow propelled right to the edge.

She captures and holds our attention from the beginning to end of the evening and in what is undoubtedly a challenging solo role.

Rand’s narrative structure employs the neat conceit of mirroring the disintegration of Korina’s personal life and sense of self worth with the topics she teaches, from the passionate (although – red flag – also possessive) declarations of love in Shelley’s youthful poetry to Stevenson’s sinister The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde, while there’s a Groundhog Day sense to her successive arrivals in the classroom, with scene changes punctuated by snatches of Alanis Morissette’s anthem about embracing the duality of the human experience, Hand in My Pocket.

The second half, in particular, is quietly powerful.

At the moment however, the first half, coming in at a lengthy 75 minutes on opening night, feels rather overextended. Tightening it to much closer to an hour would help concentrate its emotional punch and avoid narrative (and audience) fatigue.

But still, Near Miss is an engrossing and thought-provoking piece of theatre.