Review: RIGHT OF WAY, VAULT Festival

Our bodies are 60% water and 40 teaspoons of salt, says Beth Bowden. Her semi-autobiographical play explores her connection to the land on the way to a reflection on pain and chronic illness. Right Of Way is beautiful and lyrically sophisticated. Her musings on nature and her relationship with the women in her life leave space for a strong political stance on the human cost of legislation while the splendour of the South West Coast Path seeps through.

She imbues the production with projected footage and poetic prose while her body ebbs and flows in a visceral, cathartic communion with water. Bowden is at the same time haunted and attracted by it. She recalls vividly how she almost drowned at five years old, too excited to jump in the sea. The seemingly infinite expanse of blue-grey becomes a window into her soul.

Bowden is an exceptional writer, youthful in her maturity and mature in her youthfulness. Her turn of phrase is intimate, delicate, heartfelt, and artful in its depth, unafraid to drag a smile out of her audience in the midst of recalling a bittersweet memory. She narrates how her mum's diagnosis of chronic pain when she was 18 made her her mother's carer instantly, only for herself to be diagnosed as well soon after.

Recounting how her mother signed a do-not-resuscitate order during the height of Covid, she remembers in anger the 213,000 (and counting) deaths at the hand of a government that didn't bother to protect the vulnerable, elderly, and disabled members of society. She is as precise in her verse as she is direct in her criticism, making the piece universal in its idiosyncratic experiences.

Created alongside Susannah Bramwell and Nina Fidderman (respectively credited as creative producer and associate artist), Right Of Way is emotionally intelligent and poignant. It straddles the line between poetry and theatre in an exquisite exploration of the "landscape of grief". Bowden's personal approach is life-affirming and moving. Already one of this year's VAULT Five Artists, she confirms herself a promising theatre-maker.

Right Of Way runs at VAULT Festival until 26 February.

VAULT Festival has been left without a venue for next year. You can contribute to the #SaveVAULT campaign here.

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