Breathless

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I’m excited that Laura’s journey has gone from publicist to producer and playwright of her own personal story about hoarding. First she moves from her London flat to her parents’ house in Plymouth, then again to a small place of her own. Sign up to unlock our digital magazines and also receive the latest news, events, offers and partner promotions. The degree to which this is a problem comes into focus in this solo show by playwright Laura Horton when Sophie starts dating Jo, the first time she has had the courage to go out with a woman after years of relationships with men. The play has moved and delighted audiences across Plymouth and Edinburgh and will continue to resonate wherever it goes.

It’s hard, I won’t lie about that, I would never have been able to do this in my twenties, and I never would have been able to do this if I still lived in London and had to pay such insane rent, down in Plymouth it’s easier because the cost of living is lower. I’ve only really just transitioned out of still taking on PR clients in the last year, and I still have one, just in case.

What struck me about the play was the beauty of the writing, the images it conjured, the humour, the shame, the self-realisation, the poignancy, the coming out both sexually and as a hoarder and, for me personally, the hope! As I entered my twenties, the main problem was that I struggled to throw anything away, everything I owned contained a dream or a hope I had attached to it. When a secret she’s keeping from those she loves, and even from herself, threatens to unravel it all, she has to make a choice. The excess stuff tells her she has crossed the threshold from fashion enthusiast to hoarder, much as hoarding itself crossed the threshold into mental illness when it was reclassified by the World Health Organization in 2018. And then there is the shame of a suffocatingly huge amount of beautiful unworn clothes crammed into Sophie’s living space.

Breathless is a complex confident text which explores mental ill health with sensitivity as well as diversity in different forms including mental ill health, class and sexuality.There’s all the time in the world to see my place,” Sophie says, except there isn’t, because Jo is weary of being kept at a distance. BREATHLESS is a homegrown show that was conceived and developed through our artists development programmes. Breathless is at times very descriptive, telling rather than showing, but MacMahon brings the world of sample sales to life with a captivating twinkle in her eye. When a secret she’s keeping from those she loves, and even from herself, threatens to unravel it all, she must make a choice. Laura Horton’s full-length plays include: Labyrinth Diet, The Space, London 2021, ONCOMM winner; Triptych, Theatre Royal Plymouth, 2021.

One is a podcast where I speak to different people who identify with hoarding behaviours and the other one it’s about encouraging people to share the stories of the clothes that they have, when they get rid of them, when they donate them to charity, or they sell them. T he hour long play deftly conveys how hoarding and the shame of the condition gets in the way of personal relationships and those that we love, often keeping them at bay. Come along to meet like minded creatives at our our Women in Business launch event on the 8th of March! Having moved from Plymouth to London to work she signed up to a notification from every sample sale in the city, organizing her freelance schedule around it. It speaks to our ambitions to make exciting new work in Plymouth that we can share across the country.The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect the view of The Theatre Times, their staff or collaborators.