Blue/Orange at the Arcola

If I had known prior to seeing Blue/Orange that I would be crammed into a small theatre watching a play that featured only three actresses and was predominated mostly by dialogue, I probably wouldn’t have attended. Luckily I didn’t know this, as I attended Blue/ Orange and found it to be one of the most intriguing plays I’ve seen in London so far. The size of the theatre only seemed to benefit us as viewers, as it allowed us to witness the characters’ tensions towards one another and to see their emotions up close, which other plays, like Hamlet, didn’t allow. Like the people who commented previously, I thought it was cool that the set was meant to make the audience feel like voyeurs looking into a mental institution from the outside. And unlike a typical stage where the audience can only see the actors from the front, the stage where Blue/Orange was performed allowed the actors to move around more freely and to make use of the entire room, which seemed more realistic. It was easy for me to forget throughout the play that I was looking at a stage and not at an actual psychologist’s office.  

The three actresses were so convincing as the borderline psychotic patient, the idealistic first year psychologist and the conceited psychological consultant that it was difficult not to become immersed in their dialogue. I found myself entertained--and a little bit confused--by their conflicting points of view and I was trying really hard to find out what was true and what wasn’t. While a lot of people seemed to like the actress who played Juliet, I was most convinced by the character of Emily. Her emotions, which heightened gradually throughout the play, were apparent in her exaggerated facial expressions and her obnoxious, pleading tone of voice. And anyone who can feign an intense mental breakdown and make it seem believable gets lot of credit in my book. The actress who played Hilary was equally convincing because her character was very intimidating. She portrayed quite well the role of someone I would never, ever want to be my boss in real life. My favorite scenes throughout the play were the ones in which the two of them would argue back and forth, slinging insults at one another and trying passionately to express their very different opinions. While the dialogue itself was engaging, especially to a psychology major like myself, it was clear to me that the actresses were the ones who made the performance so amazing.  

Also to address the smoking issue, I didn’t love the smoke but I didn’t really find it intrusive either. I felt that I far enough from the stage that I wasn’t really effected by it. And I preferred the use of real cigarettes as opposed to fake ones because if they had used cigarettes made out of marshmallows it would have been slightly unconvincing.

Shannon Okimoto

UC Davis