CRASH by Pamela Mala Sinha (Theatre Passe Muraille). To May 13. $25-$30, some pwyc. 416-504-7529. See listings. Rating: NNN
Physical and emotional abuse leaves lots of scars, which might not open up until years later. That’s one of the powerful facts that comes across in Pamela Mala Sinha’s solo show Crash, which gets an atmospheric production even if the script itself has problems.
Sinha plays the unnamed narrator, a woman whose memories of an earlier trauma are triggered by attending her father’s funeral. She eventually recalls the harrowing events, but it takes many temporal twists and turns to get there, including a visit to a psychiatrist’s office to prevent a suicide attempt.
The often poetic story works best in a scene where the narrator talks about picking men up at a nightclub and wanting them to attack her there’s lots of disturbing psychological depth here.
But the script is often vague and elliptical, lacking an emotional payoff, and in the end you don’t get a sense of the narrator or her beloved father.
Still, under Alan Dilworth’s direction, the design elements make up for the script and performance’s shortcomings. Symbolic items like a crowbar and nightgown seem to appear like holograms (actually they emerge via Cameron Davis’s video) on Kimberly Purtell’s set, which looks like a Jungian dream come to life, full of doors, staircases and – in one nightmarish moment – the footsteps of the unseen, elusive abuser.