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The Art of swimming - REVIEW I saw The Art of Swimming unfold It is a few hours now after The Art of Swimming's opening night in The Hague and I still can't extricate myself from the strange spell that only pure, 24 carat art can cast upon its spectator. Set against the uncannily well fitting backdrop of a real dune (aka the belly of the Museum Beelden aan Zee ) and separated from a real beach and an even more real sunset by a mere sheet of glass, this story is a literary sleuth's reconstruction of the life of Mercedes Gleitze, the first British woman to swim across the Channel. Starting from this historical fact, the play wraps itself around the audience by ways of a highly suggestive narrative, grace to the many talents of playwright and performer Lynda Radley. Her tools are few and well chosen; and just as Mercedes had to manage her resources very well in order to reach the other shore, Ms Radley doses her soliloquy with an incredibly accurate sense of timing. Her voice oozes like the ticking of a well-tuned metronome or the trickle of a hospital infusion, giving away just enough of the story to keep the audience enthralled. By proxy, the different layers of the story touch upon vulnerable realms within ourselves: the longing for finding one's home, failure, fear, exhaustion, humiliation, sensationalism, fame, plagiarism, patriotism, determination, honor and more. With sparing movements and a few symbolically charged props Ms Radley manages to recreate much more than just the life of Mercedes Gleitze. (To mention but one of the many auxiliary achievements of the author: Mercedes feels British and yet, she murmurs her Hail Mary in pristine German before diving into the black waters. What a credible way to reconcile her issues of identity and belonging in times of war and peace - a rather complex matter in the 20th century, when one's parentage is half German and half British... ) Throughout the play Mercedes Gleitze keeps swimming, allowing glimpses of her thoughts, her pains and fears reach us and take us along, deep into the dark, cold waves. When the waves of life hit her hard, Mercedes keeps swimming, and her silent grandeur becomes evident when she embarks on a hopeless, dangerous quest, in order to restore her honor. We are told that her colossal achievement actually stems from childhood homesickness for the beloved English shores. The narrator swims, as well - on dry land, so to speak. As she feeds us crumbs of her life as a typist, snippets of her incursions into the library archives where she peruses Mercedes' swimming logs, photographs, letters and sketches, the circle of her words widens and tightens, just as waves would hit the shore in rhythmic crescendos and decrescendos. Throughout the play Mercedes and the narrating I merge and separate; the two voices reflect upon their lives in the slow, ceremonious, and graceful steps of a minuet. Chaperoned by John McCarthy's live accordion airs, they tell their story in an unhurried manner, flawless, spot on and always on time. I can't help it – this quiet tale does not let go of me. The more I listen to its echo within the more it enriches and exhausts me, and I find myself swimming along; for honor and country and for my very own salvation. As of today, beyond the endless waves there lie the ripples of determination, of untold courage and endurance – be it the inspiring courage of Mercedes Gleitze or the humbling courage of young Lynda Radley, the biographer-cum-writer-cum-actor, who dared to put all of the above into words and then come before us. Eva László-Herbert Logos-The Power of Words |