MAN by Emma Taylor at Seven Dials Playhouse & Edinburgh Festival

‘fascinating non-linear show which shocks and delights in equal measure’

Emma Taylor’s one women show surprises and delights.   Based on her own personal experiences, Taylor creates a jigsaw of colourful characters from her past which includes her Hungarian gangster dad and a Sunday school teacher mother. Also covered are other events in her life, including her teenage years with the Hell's Angels and being stalked when she was just a young girl. “Stop following me you freak” is one of the lines that slips out of Taylor’s mouth, in a re-enactment of that period of her life, shown from his perspective as well as hers.  The show is far from linear, and characters pop in and out, with Taylor expertly jumping from one to the other in one fluid movement.

As the show unfolds, we begin to recognise the characters. We understand that she’s been in contact with people who have been through traumas of their own and she’s seen things or heard things that children shouldn’t be subjected to at such a young age.  These moments that shock are interspersed with many humorous scenes. 

The show is an eloquent vehicle for Taylor’s talents as an actress. Her authentic accents include Hungarian, Liverpudlian, Cockney and RP. Each character has his or her own life and sphere of understanding. There is clearly a backstory for some of them. One of the most powerful being her gangster dad, offering to teach her some things most dads wouldn’t suggest. He sounds cruel and intimidating, but this is Taylor’s ‘normal’. 

The performance, directed by Russel Lucas, is striped back to only a few props, with Taylor wearing black clothing and no makeup. There is something very raw about her performance, a brave and confident delivery in which her years in dance and drama training, and her experience as an actor and public speaker are very pronounced.  In a nod to these experiences in her life, Taylor gives two performances. One is a short balletic number, which shows her enjoyment of dance.  The second is Kate’s monologue from Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, which feels very apt and is a further display of her talents.

By the end of show, audiences who have been paying attention, can grasp some of the linking themes. Crucially, Taylor has given a few pointers to help them to piece it all together, but perhaps a few more of these wouldn’t go amiss, to enable audiences to understand the overall idea.

Within the show we learn that Taylor has had a lot of therapy but there is no self-pitying here. This is a show about the ‘man’, it’s all about the ‘man, and the idea that women must ‘serve the man’. Here we might have pause to think. It’s not just women who suffer from a purely patriarchal experience of life, men are also poorer as they lose out on something that would make their lives so much richer and who does not crave that?

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MAN by Emma Taylor

Co-created and directed by Russell Lucas

EDINBURGH VENUE 302 - UNDERBELLY Dairy Room, Bristo Square, Teviot

Place, EH8 9AG 

15- 25 August 2024 at 14.55 pm (55 minutes)

Tickets: https://www.underbellyedinburgh.co.uk/event/man-a-one-woman-show

LONDON PREVIEWS: Seven Dials Playhouse. 

Friday 28 June + Friday 12 July