The enemy within is explored in this new take on Nothomb’s bestseller
Your flight is delayed and you are waiting in the worst kind of place: that section of the airport after you have passed security, where life becomes ridiculously overpriced and people fight for an empty seat. Most of us have felt that special kind of irritation that only happens at a departure lounge. While you wait to board the plane, you are trapped and at the mercy of the sky gods. A sense of claustrophobia sets in as two women wait for their flight to Barcelona, their future uncertain, writes Eugenia Sestini.
Sitting in a tailored, demure dress, businesswoman Jenna Angust has her head buried in a book while she waits for further announcements regarding her flight. Another passenger, Texta Texel, sits next to her and tries to engage in conversation. What at first seems like your standard human interaction over shared grievances regarding airlines quickly turns south.
If Texta’s clothes are loud – leopard-print high boots, a scanty sleeveless top, large crimson earrings and matching leather gloves – her opinions are even louder, and she seems to possess them in abundance. Chirpy at first, Texta fails to rope Jenna in but does not relent; unfazed by blatant rejection, she leaves her seat and moves around the stage, hovers over Jenna and encroaches on her privacy. A human hurricane, Texta inevitably pulls Jenna in, forcing her to listen to stories about her childhood trauma and her dreadful deeds. Unabashed, she pushes Jenna’s buttons so that she can admit that there are things she cannot hide, the enemy within her, “the gorilla inside you.” This production explores the human need for control, the lies we tell ourselves, the thoughts we push away so they don’t consume us, the parts of ourselves we reject.
Director Benedetta Scuto has translated Amélie Nothomb’s psychological thriller Cosmétique de l’ennemi and adapted it for the stage, changing the original male characters to female and giving it new life by shining a light on the moral, philosophical questions behind it.
Meghan Mabli is a turbulent Texta, her exuberance capturing the audience with sprinklings of humour that break some of the inescapable tension, while Jessica Mattarelli skilfully doses her exasperation as an overwrought Jenna. Adam Wadge completes the cast as an airport police officer. This is Scuto’s second collaboration with Mattarelli and Mabli, she previously wrote and directed Slow Death of a Lotus Flower, which ran to multiple sold-out audiences across London’s pub theatre circuit in 2021-2022. Cosmetics of the Enemy runs at the Bread & Roses Theatre in Clapham on September 13th and 14th.
Booking and full details: https://app.lineupnow.com/event/cosmetics-of-the-enemy
