Anatomy of a Suicide tell the story of inter-generational trauma along three generations of women, Carol, Anna, and Bonnie, who are mother, daughter, and granddaughter respectively.
As the play opens, Carol has survived a suicide attempt, Anna begins her own seemingly irrevocable downward spiral, and Bonnie struggles with the anguish of what she may pass down her family’s maternal line.
Set in traverse, the three timelines – Carol’s beginning in the early 70s, Anna’s in the late 90s, and Bonnie set in the near future – are performed almost simultaneously. A word in one scene echoing in another as that one progresses before handing off to one of the others.
There’s a musicality to the action as it rises and falls and shifts, yet that music isn’t always harmonious, which is by design. It’s an intricate story told in an intricate – at times impenetrable – way.
These echos weren’t always verbal. A consequence of playing on a traverse means entering and entering the stage from either end, which means actors crossing past each other.
Director, Katie Smith, makes the astute choice and weaving this necessity into the larger storytelling – characters creating physical parallels as they pass each other, move set and props, or changing costumes on stage.
Georgie Wolf’s lighting design and Grace Ferguson’s sound are an indispensable part of the difficult tapestry being woven, accentuating moments or retreating to the background as required.
Ashleigh Coleman was phenomenal in the role of Carol, capturing not only Carol’s despair but conveying the sense of something increasingly and inexorably slipping from her grasp, a future she can not escape. This wretched weight was picked up and portrayed superbly by Erin Perry as Anna, unable to arrest what’s coming.
Elisa Armstrong gave a riveting performance as the adult Bonnie, showing the cost of living with such immense dread and the conviction required to ensure that, “… it goes no further, no deeper, no longer. That it finishes here.”
There is a happier, hopeful world surrounding Carol, Anna, Bonnie – depicted in excellent fashion by the rest of the cast (particularly France Lee and Harper Hynes) – but it is unable to get in.
The burden is immense, and choices the characters make certainly linger after the final curtain in this outstanding and thought-provoking production.
Anatomy of a Suicide
Meat Market Stables, 2 Wreckyn Street, North Melbourne
Performance: Friday 7 February 2025
Season continues to 16 February 2025
Bookings: www.eventbrite.com
For more information, visit: www.weareheartstring.com for details.
Image: Ashleigh Coleman and Erin Perrey in Anatomy of a Suicide – photo by Angel Leggas
Review: June Collins