As I arrived to see My First Time Was in a Car Park I had no idea of what to expect. I’d opted not to do research, as for Fringe festival events I find it’s often a lot more memorable to go into shows with no clue of what’s to come. I’ve seen a fair few Brighton Fringe shows over the years, and this experience only served to confirm this further.
Some plays are brilliant despite being bare bones, capturing the audience’s attention through great storytelling. Others, however, can come across as a slam poetry recital from students fresh out of Drama School. It can be a lucky dip.
So when I entered the dimly-lit performance room, albeit slightly late (which you can dock my review points for), to see the support act, Bodies by the Sea, in full flow amidst a confusing flurry of cadences and metaphors delivered with an off-kilter meter, my interest was certainly piqued.
The warm-up act left me interested in what was to come, their performance was suitably manic for the untethered narrative of each piece. An unhinged salvo of emotion, rage, and anger, supplemented by compassion and healing, begins to prepare you for the main event.
The main show started almost abruptly, with the character, Mira, immediately differentiating herself from the previous acts as she acknowledges the audience, half-addressing them. You feel like a fly on the wall, inside Mira’s brain as the viewer could be argued to play the role of a part of their inner-self.
The explosive and unpredictable delivery, combined with the unfiltered stream of consciousness that the piece clearly derives some inspiration from; details some of the deepest inner workings of a person processing severe trauma.
At first, the delivery is playful, tongue-in-cheek. The audience is led into thinking the story unfolding might be a comedy, with off-the-cuff remarks, and the initial opening salvo being recounted with a cheery, albeit manic tone; as if desperate to get further into the story, in order to allow the release of her complex trauma.
The story is brilliantly structured, leading the audience down multiple cul-de-sacs before dropping the truth behind Mira’s experiences. It’s a coming-of-age story in a way, but one in which everything has already been horribly skewed from the start.
It features many of the tropes you’d expect; a first-time trying Ecstacy, which allows for a temporary release from the constant circling questions that pervade her mind, as a result of her experience in the school car park.
This brief foray into drugs ends as most do: With an exclamation of love and forgiveness to even those that have seriously hurt them, the man who stole her innocence being the subject of this uninhibited forgiveness. Perhaps through desperation that this might somehow help her feel better about it all.
From here, Mira as the voice of the narrative, is unable to maintain a more upbeat tone, becoming overcome by questions of why she endured such an event. These questions extend to existentialism, as she ponders the force behind life itself.
Even in the midst of these panicked, desperate episodes, a respite from this emotional bombardment comes in the form of surrealist detours from her own direct story. An escape into a news story on the television, and taking refuge from her thoughts inside the safety of the innards of a tomato, an allegory for a want to return to the womb.
Despite myself never having never had such a desire, the approach in expressing the concept of ‘Womb Fantasy’ lets you empathise with the notion effortlessly. In a stressful world, marred by such a harrowing experience, a yearning to feel safe and have another take complete responsibility for them is drawn upon on multiple occasions.
To use a cliche, the performance is a rollercoaster. Manically sifting through anything relevant to her current psyche, any happiness and positivity to cling on to in the throws of such complex guilt and shame.
It’s vividly powerful, and I can’t give the writing and the performance enough praise for how well they’ve explored these complexities.
Too often mental illness, PTSD, and resultant personality disorder are used as a cheap means to put on a “memorable” performance. However, here mania and Mira’s musings on life and death aren’t simply a gimmick to give the performance extra gravitas.
Even if the performance draws heavily upon this mania, it is a perfectly accurate depiction of the grasping search for meaning in the events that haunt us.
Those desperate peaks and troughs of emotion that make the inescapable stream of thoughts and memories torturous are brought to life immaculately.
For writers, it’s often hard to approach all of the themes and emotions explored in the piece. But here, the writer has done particularly well to present an accurate representation of the repercussions this level of trauma can have on the deepest parts of our inner being.
As the piece enters its closing moments Mira finds some level of calmness, but in no way will she ever be the same again. As with most that deal with loss and trauma at a young age, the acceptance comes, but this acknowledgment changes nothing about her first time in a car park.
The performance finishes, and my initial thoughts echo much of what I have already described.
The pacing also deserves praise, with the piece seemingly the perfect length. With such an emotionally testing performance, any longer could have started to feel overwhelming, or a sacrifice from the subtlety of the less obvious themes.
Were it any shorter it would have felt far too incomplete. Thanks to the impressive pacing you’re left with a few questions, but not too many.
It’s exactly how this sort of performance should leave you if done well. As I dwelled on it more, My First Time Was in a Car Park only got better, with the initial bombardment of emotion much more than a cheap trick to fool the audience.
Overall, I would certainly recommend seeing this while it’s still on, for the rest of the Fringe Festival. The Bodies By The Sea opener was a little harder to follow for me personally.
However, there was still plenty to enjoy about the performances, as it serves to prepare you for the darker themes of the main piece well.
For a quick blast of the arts, it’s a great spectacle, that promises to explore the very depths of humanity when facing internal conflict.
If you want to see it for yourself, you can find a performance on the show’s Brighton Fringe page here.
