A tapestry of words is the backdrop for Holly Sewell’s show Dazzling about “love, art, and addiction”. The stage is strewn with food packages, bottles, papers.
Alix (Alix Addinall) is already on stage, moving things around, pacing the stage, getting into things as we arrive. As we hear about their work, home, and love life, Dazzling opens out into a study of mental distress and addiction.
Addinall makes Alix very likeable in their early scenes of friendship with male friend Jan and romantic interest Fiona. Their co-worker Robin is a bit cartoonish, and I could take or leave him, but this is just set-dressing and scene-setting.
Art, love, and recovery are all part of Dazzling. As Alix holds desperately on to one part of their life, another unravels. It isn’t about sexuality or career progression, just a dark dose of the black dog.
Sewell has created a character that is both pitiful in their alcoholic regression and depression, yet one you root for throughout. Dazzling is a dark piece that doesn’t hold the answers.
It’s a careful balance that director Viv Wang helps Addinall explore, with one end of the stage a sofa and the other a makeshift bed on the floor. Safe spaces of retreat and open areas of panic.
True to mental disintegration as well as substance abuse, Dazzling plays with the idea of creativity throughout, while making both Jan, the platonic friend, and Fiona, the sensual lover, fully formed through Alix’s eyes.
Those words draw us in through the set design – fist, abyss, cringe. It could describe both how Alix views the world at their lowest and how they turn on those who claim to love and respect them.
Dazzling could stand a little more development in understanding Alix’s back story and means to recover and deal with the harshness of life and relationships.
As it stands, the script is extremely effective, and in the hands of Addinall and Wang, this production is a quirky and honest look into its complex themes.
Dazzling has now finished its run at Riverside Studios Bitesize Festival, but I’m sure this is not the last we have seen of Alix.
****
Image credit for Alix Addinall: Fun Loose Screw X account