Bruised
The Blue Room Theatre
Thursday, July 10 2025
Local theatrical troupe, Follow That Cat Productions, brought their newest piece, Bruised, to The Blue Room Theatre this winter. Written by award-winning playwright Vivienne Glance, it was an urgent and pressing examination of current and near-future climate concerns that was at times almost suffocating in its intensity.
Centred around a shared dinner following a climate science lecture, the bleak yet very data-driven play deftly wove a seemingly disparate cast of characters tightly together to a common cause. The piece imaginatively moved back and forward in time to demonstrate its underlying themes while also exquisitely showcasing the dichotomy of group silence and individual anxieties concurrent in the face of existential overwhelm.
The small ensemble performed strongly and interacted well with one another. The Former Astronaut, as brought onstage by Alinta Carroll, appeared somewhat cold and standoffish, her head in the clouds—both physically and figuratively. Her narrated internal monologue indicated she wished to make better connections but was often unable to.
Shirley van Sanden played the Migrant character with self-assured aplomb. Both the script and the actor brought to the fore a steely resolve to survive her past paired with a relaxed, matter-of-fact re-examination of that journey. Vivienne Glance, also the creator of the piece, gave her role of the Birdwatcher a lived-in realism, her surface-level fascination with Shiraz and Thai food masking deeper trauma.
Perhaps the standout performance, though, was that given by Emily Jenkins. Playing a double shift as both Granddaughter and Young Woman, Jenkins easily evoked a wide-eyed naivete on behalf of the pre-teen, and, in her second role, channelled Gen Z’s potent mix of cynicism, rage and nihilism. For much of the runtime, Jenkins’ characters seemed sidelined, until an utterly blistering monologue at the denouement of the piece, white-hot in its unrepressed fury, unveiled a seething honesty that disarmed all—both on stage and off.
Bruised showed a keen interest in the wilful blindness of polite society to the future likely to come, while also delving deeply into the characters’ nightmares and terrors when alone. The staging, sound, and light designs were minimalist, almost to the point of scarcity. The use of projection and animation gave the stage a wider depth when required, meaning the audience could be taken swiftly from a busy suburban restaurant, across estuarine mudflats, to low orbit space, without a beat missed.
With very heavy themes that most struggle to process even on the very best of days, Bruised could not be described as an easy watch but was an important piece that will likely only become more so as the decade continues. Everyone associated with the production should be commended for bringing such a weighty piece to us.
In such an attention-starved year as 2025, Bruised was a timely reminder both of our deepest fears and our strongest chances at salvation.