Theatre: Fast At Highgate’s Upstairs At The Gatehouse
It was Halloween Night and Highgate Village was seething with ghouls and ghosts and all things scary. Inflatable dinosaurs prowled the dark streets with vampires and witches while a dental surgery drummed up future customers by dishing out sugary Trick or Treat sweeties.
Above the nearby popular pub the Upstairs at the Gatehouse theatre audience shivered to the sound of whistling wind and strains of a mouth organ as the curtain rose on Fast, a psychological thriller.
Fast shines a light on how we demand our fixes, whether an espresso or instant weight loss, a face freeze with Botox or bottom lift at a dodgy Turkish clinic. Celebs – including Boris backer Nadine Dorries _ are jumping on the Ozempic anti-fat jabs faster than you can scoff a brownie.
It was ever so if this drama is to be believed. It’s based on a true story, so maybe we haven’t moved on too far from the early 1900s when ‘Dr’ Linda Hazzard was peddling her own brand of Fasting for the Cure of Disease in her little red book published in her American homeland. The book is selling like hot cakes, although these delights are strictly forbidden by Hazzard (is her name a clue?) whose regime is strictly veggie, with no alcohol and only asparagus broth and daily enemas to look forward to. The wearing of corsets is forbidden.
The disciplinarian doc’s notoriety has spread to England, prompting two 20-something young ladies with more (inherited) money than sense to sail to Seattle and the Wilderness Heights Sanitarium.
The beautifully attired Dora _ who seems depressed _ and her lip-glossed younger sister Claire _ suffering a ‘tipped back uterus’ but equally stylish _ are instantly diagnosed. ‘You are both very sick and should start an immediate fast to remove toxins,’ hectors Hazzard, demanding $60 dollars a week. So start six weeks of hell as the sisters are separated, each confined to a spartan cell with its iron hospital bed and schedule of what Hazzard calls internal baths _ ‘in time its use becomes a pleasure’ _ and painful massage _ ‘we all have to suffer now and again’.
Is she crazy? A wicked snake oil salesman? A torturer? A misguided money grabber? Even a killer?
She is certainly a complex and utterly driven radical, believing that nothing but fresh air will cure humanity. And brilliantly portrayed by Sarah Thom, who breaks the fourth wall to engage the audience with questions about their health. Careful what you wish for…
She ratchets up the tension and menace while the sisters (sensitively played by Maia von Malaise and Imogen Gray) suffer at what is dubbed Starvation Heights. And while Horace Cayton, a dogged reporter from the Seattle Daily Times, digs into the dubious and downright dangerous methods of Dr Starvation, the deaths and swindling. Jermaine Dominique shines as Cayton, who is an outsider as the son of a slave, fearlessly investigates Hazzard despite accusations he is a shameless, muck-racking hack. Who is the real villain in this murky tale? Could it be the mysterious figure of Hazzard’s husband Samuel (Karl Wilson)?
The play is so topical, set against a ballooning global diet market projected to be worth over 4 billion US dollars by 2030. That’s a lot of Big Macs. (N.B. projected global fast food market will be worth a gut-busting 1,075 billion US dollars by then!).
Fast has enjoyed successes in Brighton, Edinburgh and London. Now playwright Kate Barton has developed her original one-act play, with award-winning screenwriter Stephen Bennett, into a full-length psychological thriller. As Bennett comments: ‘As long as there’s a world full of naive and gullible innocents, there will always be calculating “influencers” lining up to exploit them. It’s one of the darker inevitabilities of human interaction.’ Using Hazzard’s memoirs Fast explores a woman in a man’s world aspiring to build a career in medicine. Her methods raised questions, prompted police investigations and challenged law makers, but were her intentions good or fuelled by self-gain?
Fast, although a satisfying theatrical experience, left the audience with a few unanswered questions and loose ends. Not least: why so much lip gloss and flawless foundation was slapped onto a tortured, starving woman.
But whenever you visit Upstairs at the Gatehouse between now and November 17 you won’t need painted Halloween monsters to make your flesh creep. Fast does that.
