Bedbound

Venue: The Lion and Unicorn Theatre Club
Where: Inner London
Date Reviewed: 31 October 2009
WOS Rating: *****


Who knew the story of a small-town Irish furniture salesman and his daughter could be so disturbing – and so horribly, beautifully poetic? But in Enda Walsh’s one-act play Bedbound, revived by Little Everywhere and director Kate Budgen, ugly and beautiful, speech and silence, dissolve into new meanings.

Bedbound

By Enda Walsh
Little Everywhere
Lion and Unicorn Theatre

Review by Howard Loxton (2009)

A girl in a bed and, emerging later from underneath the covers, her dad, though she’s not quite sure that he really is her dad – they are a pair trapped together and trapped by life. It’s a recurring feature in several of Walsh’s plays, sometimes literal, sometimes metaphorical. The polio- ravaged daughter here says her dad has built walls around her but he too seems chained to the bed, never able to stray more than a few feet away as with frenetic drive in almost non-stop monologue he reviews his psychopathic pursuit of his ambitions.