#2. How To Hold Your Breath.

How to Hold Your Breath by Zinnie Harris
Premiered at the Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, Sloane Square (4 February 2015)
Published by Faber & Faber

I was lucky enough to see Vicky Featherstone's production of How to Hold Your Breath at the Royal Court in Spring this year, and found it quite a perplexing piece. Despite the confident production and impressive performances from Maxine Peake and cast, I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. It is with this in mind that How To Hold Your Breath is play number two in the Play-a-Day project!

Zinnie Harris' play is what you might call an 'ideas play' - and there are certainly a lot of ideas in it. The main arc centres around an economic crash on a scale as yet unseen, which turns the entire Eurozone into a kind of post-apocolyptic, lawless mess. This is within the concept of a Book-of-Job-like struggle between an apparent demon, Jarron (which interestingly means 'cry of rejoicing'), and Dana, who refuses to let him settle a perceived debt after he mistakes her for a prostitute and sleeps with her. But Dana has more important things to worry about, like an interview for a new grant to fund her study of customer-business relationships. After the disastrous interview, perplexingly she is asked to Alexandria for a follow up interview. Dana's pregnant sister, Jasmine, travels through the failing Europe with her, and a hapless, useless guide-come-guardian angel of a Librarian pops up along the way with recommendations of good self-help books, failing to be any sort of help.

There are some moments of incredibly passionate writing, which reveal the depth of Harris' powers.

Shortly into her journey, she discovers the banks have collapsed overnight. They have no money, no transport, no food and an increasingly desperate need to get out. They become refugees, forced into degradation. All of this, Dana believes, is as a result of Jarron trying to force her to beg for his money. All the while, Dana stays focussed on the interview - if only she can get to Alexandria and get the job all will be fine. Meanwhile, the Librarian is always on hand with a wealth of wittily titled 'How to...' books which, inevitably, fail to help Dana.

Maxine Peake (Dana) and Michael Shaeffer (Jarron)

It is a play about its ideas, not about its characters; each character becomes more of a symbol. Jarron seems to represent the demonic reduction of relationships to financial transactions, the Librarian a sort of inert guiding light married to the consumerist ideology of quick fixes, Jasmine and certainly her unborn child some sort of fragile, damaged purity. And what of Dana herself? Well, her insistence that she can find her way back to the old order, that she will get a job and get paid and be able to buy a nice new flat and solve everything, and her focus on hating what she sees as an external aggressor that is destroying a healthy way of life... To me, this seems to make her a confused symbol of the old order itself; crumbling, dehumanising, desperate - but insistent.

While Harris' primary focus may not be on the characters but on what they stand for, her ear for dialogue is unique; it has a rhythm and a patter that is somehow heightened just enough to be perceptible, but not enough to feel wholly alien. There are some moments of incredibly passionate writing, for instance in Jasmine's tirade after she miscarries her child, which reveal the depth of Harris' powers.

In the very final moments of the play, Dana finally gets to start the interview we have seen glimpses of throughout. But at what cost? Her unborn nephew has perished. Her sister drowned. Europe has fallen. She is no more than a shell of what she used to be, pumped up on adrenaline administered by a demon. Should she in fact, as the Librarian tries to convince Jarron over her dying body, be left to die? Would that not be kinder? Caught between being tempted by the jewels of consumerism and running from them, she finally gives in to the tempting demon. If we stop thinking of her as a person, divorce ourselves of the instinctive responses, and think of her as a symbol of a dying system... Are we really satisfied that this is the best we can do? Could we not let it die, and in its wake find something new?

Of course, the playwright seems to strongly sit in the 'tear it up and start again' camp, and pushes her morality through to the end. What's missing from this debate altogether is the counterargument, as hell-bent capitalists are turned into economic refugees. It is a shame there is not more of a sense of debate. Harris does hold a lot back in terms of answers to the small questions, perhaps with a view to leave the focus on the big issues, but the danger is that the audience or reader may get sidelined by her more ostentatious ideas.

Harris presents us with a harrowing potential future if we carry on as we are going, in a play full of ambiguity, surprising wit and theatricality. Harris' dialogue style is distinctive and her voice as a playwright is powerful, even unique. The play itself will naturally divide audiences and readers for its disturbing political and cultural resonance - and will potentially frustrate some for having its heels firmly dug in on one side of the fence. In production, too, it will certainly present a challenge. It is exciting writing, though - I'll certainly be rushing to get tickets for Harris' next play!

Maxine Peake (Dana) and Christine Bottomley (Jasmine) in Vicky Featherstone's production.

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