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Avalanche: A Love Story
The Barbican, London
AVALANCHE is one woman’s story of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and it is, by its very nature, a gruelling experience.
The centrepiece of the Barbican’s first international Fertility Fest, designed to raise awareness of fertility and infertility issues globally, it’s based on Julia Leigh’s very personal account of her own IVF treatment and is performed as a monologue by Maxine Peake.
IVF is no picnic and, for those who have no experience of it, Leigh’s piece is an eye-opener. The magic and mystery of conception are reduced to detailed analyses of hormone injections, fresh and frozen human eggs, sperm counts and “viable blastocysts.”
As for the woman, she endures seven years and more of physical and mental invasion, only for time to run out so that she faces a world populated by other people’s children where the hugely emotive word “mother” must pass her by.
Serious themes emerge — the overwhelming, even obsessive desire for a child that can devastate lives, the fallibility of scientists and the exploitative potential of IVF, whereby doctors reap huge financial benefits from the desperate needs of others.
Both grim and moving, such subjects might possibly better be served as a multi-faceted drama rather than one person’s unchallenged cry from the heart.
Yet this is no ordinary monologue and with Peake, how could it be? Ninety minutes with only her as performer is worth anyone’s money. Embracing us as if we are her dear and trusted friends, she shares the rollercoaster of a journey that tears her apart, sparking an avalanche in body and spirit alike.
Both Peake and the author, we are to understand, have endured IVF treatment so this is a personal journey and some may claim it barely counts as acting.
But it’s a tour de force of the craft — controlled, resolutely without a trace of self-indulgence, massively empathetic and real. If there’s to be a successor to Judi Dench, Peake must be it as she pulls in the crowds and delivers a uniqueness of spirit that has us eating out of her hand.
Directed by Anne-Louise Sarks, it’s a splendid performance of a hugely truthful and skilful script. And while the piece cries out for challenge from other characters with different perspectives and the obsession at its heart may limit its dramatic potential, this private audience with Peake is more than value enough.
Runs until May 12, box office: barbican.org.uk
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