Cheque Please, Theatre Review. Zoo, Edinburgh, Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Madeleine Hardy, Nick Slater, Diderik Ypma, Libby Boyd, Genevieve Cunnell, Becca Jones.

It is the bill that can never be truly split, the one that becomes the sole reserve of the person to whom the experience has affected with greater clouded reasoning than another and the one that whilst people may want to go Dutch with you upon, to share in the bleakness that crowds the everyday, they also want to leave their own version of a tip firmly implanted in that person’s mind. The idea of asking for the Cheque Please, is one that is shrouded in air of finality and calculated judgement.

Presented by Stuff and The Nottingham New Theatre, Nikki Hill’s Cheque Please looks into a couple of weeks in the life of a young restaurant worker Ivy and the descent into a world not of her making in which life truly gets swept from underneath her and the slow pull of depression takes hold.

It seems almost a national disgrace that the topic of depression can still evoke such issues in people to the point where they won’t talk to anyone weighed down by the very real crippling state of emotional distress. They will almost shun and ridicule the person suffering from the stress and despair with bandied words designed to hurt rather than taking even a moment out to try and offer any assistance in which words could help heal.

In Nikki Hill’s superb play on at Zoo during the Edinburgh Festival, the subject is one in which the audience truly can empathise with as Ivy, played with exceptional ability and a truth in her eyes by Madeleine Hardy, as she truly gives the mental anguish suffered by many in silence a voice, a scream of the pained injured animal in its most powerful resonance, suffers the loss of a co-worker and the fall out that come from such a trigger.

Loss is the point, we might not see the trigger in which any type of loss can bring, the sudden emptiness left in the gaping chasm of a life or indeed the first small crack, the chink in the well preserved armour we place around ourselves, but loss is the point nevertheless and as Ivy grapples with this loss, the everyday, the tiredness, the sometimes moments in which misguided personal judgements come forth, so the mirror is held up to the audience and the question asked of what would you do to help a soul in need.

A poignant, funny, revealing and tender play that deals with the very real issues surrounding the thoughts of depression, a play that is a marvellous addition to the Edinburgh Fringe!

Ian D. Hall