11.72°C I Know All the Secrets in My World – Tiata Fahodzi at the Mercury Studio
“A play about what happens when speaking is impossible” is how Tiata Fahodzi describe this delicate and affecting piece, which explores the relationship between a father and son following the loss of their wife and mother.
We first see them as a tight-knit unit: playing on the Wii, setting the table for breakfast, re-enacting superhero adventures. Then their world collapses. Play becomes strained, routines fracture, and words begin to disappear as grief slowly chokes their ability to communicate.
Samuel Nicholas, as the son, and Solomon Israel, as the father, deliver physically powerful and emotionally intelligent performances. The movement is taut and precise, beautifully conveying the devastation that has overtaken their world. The mother’s presence is felt through her absence – her voice heard at the beginning via an answerphone recording, her perfume briefly filling the space, and in a striking late sequence, her clothes descending from door frames, softly lit and hauntingly still.
Father and son drift further apart. The few words spoken – “Dad, I love you” – feel fragile, almost lost at the edge of hearing. The father frequently stutters, unable to articulate his pain. When he finally begins to confront his grief, he sets the breakfast table once more and gently asks his son, “How are you?” It is a beautifully understated moment.
At times, I felt the play could have pushed further into the son’s inner world. His creation of an imagined reality as a coping mechanism hints at rich territory that could have been explored more deeply. From certain seats in the studio, elements of the staging were occasionally obscured.
Nevertheless, Tiata Fahodzi have crafted a piece so tender and fragile that you feel it might shatter if handled too roughly. Mesmerising.
