Now at Theatro Technis following a much-lauded 2024 Finborough Theatre run, the production is solely lit by candles – bar the occasional flick of a hand-held torch.
The drive to evoke a primal experience of storytelling pays off as themes of domestic violence and punishment are handled with a lingering grace.
The story is hard-hitting. Mac [Ché Walker again, a Camden Town raised playwright and seasoned actor], has been incarcerated for 20 years for murdering his wife.
The photo of his daughter at around three years old along with the memory of her laughter keeps him going and when he gets out of prison, his impulse is to find her.
Years of imagining what she may have become – ‘a barrister, film editor, housing officer’ – don’t prepare him for the reality that is Scratch [Joanne Marie Mason].
She’s the damaged product of a flawed care system; a spiralling ‘wolf-child’ who falls in love with Jayjayjay [Alice Walker], another free spirit, joyriding on the night they meet.
The play runs at only 70 minutes but the three narrative voices cast quite a spell.
The emotional charge of sexuality and aggression is channelled through dialogue that is a hybrid of street-smart realism and poetry shot through with animal imagery.
Scratch’s memory of the pool of blood, milk and ants beside her dying mother sear the brain.
Elsewhere there are descriptions that sound near antiquated like Mac’s prison as ‘liquified and disarrayed.’
The subject matter veers close to Theatre in Education with its focus on offenders and our failing penal system but it’s clearly not naturalism.
Uchenna Ngwe’s harp and piano compositions, beautifully played by Ruby Aspinall, add a further spiritual dimension. As Mac, Walker is credibly straight-talking and tender, ultimately unknowable as his recourse to violence raises more questions.
Even so, the issue of femicide is oddly under-explored. As Scratch, Joanne Marie Mason’s shifts from trauma paralysis to energising passion are electrifying to watch.
And Alice Walker’s nuanced portrayal of someone trying to love a person back to life breaks your heart.
Burnt Up Love runs at Theatro Technis in Crowndale Road, Camden Town until April 18.
