by Diana Miranda

The fringe theatre in the UK takes pride in being a haven for new writing, offering platforms such as R&D workshops, scratch nights and fringe festivals. While the model has its quirks and shortcomings, it remains a space for showcasing and tweaking new work. However, artists navigate a product-oriented landscape that puts pressure to deliver new work.

Creators hope to bang out their next great idea in a jiffy, while theatregoers take for granted the shiny thing in front of them. This environment can obscure the complex, iterative process required to develop a piece, but the truth is that whipping something into shape is not a linear process and often requires do-overs with limited resources.

Take this play, a tragicomic two-hander exploring a mind-boggling one-night stand. Set in a cluttered flat with a couch surrounded by rubbish and a coffee table topped with cocaine, the play delves into the million-dollar question: what are couples willing to do to keep the fire alive?

Watching Mercurial feels like navigating a house of mirrors. I’ve been in and out of the creative process and experienced the play’s evolution from different angles (sometimes literally. Its first scratch night was on the round). It would be inaccurate to say that I’ve been in the thick of all things Mercurial, but it feels apt to talk about my personal experience as a familiarised if not all-encompassing peek into its journey.

My first encounter with the play was in Autumn 2023, ahead of a work-in-progress showing as part of Slainte Theatre’s scratch night at the Irish Cultural Institute. The script, then a 20-minute piece, is reshaped by dissecting its characters during rehearsals. No spoilers: actor Elliot Eason’s interpretation of the tough-looking introvert he portrays takes the narrative away from sexual fantasies, and colours it as a revenge thriller. A mid-section monologue by a third character is introduced, providing a flashback that deepens the suspense. This monologue, originally written by Rosaleen Cox as a one-woman piece before Mercurial even existed, becomes an experiment to see if it could be further embedded in the piece. It didn’t.

In January 2024, Mercurial is presented by Wooden Arrow Productions at LAMDA’s Sainsbury Theatre. Changes take place for purely technical reasons: also a scratch night, the event features a series of 10-minute pieces, so the cast only performs the first half. They have a deeper understanding of the characters this time around, and Sophie McMahon’s direction focuses on the duo’s interactions, enhancing the connection between actors and keeping up the tension towards a cliffhanger ending. Observation games and listening exercises abound in the rehearsal space.

This summer, Riverside Studios’ Bitesize Festival has showcased Mercurial’s latest iteration and its leap to a 50-minute length. The creative team has changed, but the cast remains. A focus group provides feedback after a dress rehearsal led by director Beth Drury. The focus is not on the playtext now but on its staging. After watching the piece, however, I can’t help but recognise bits from the early script sprinkled throughout, as well as the squirm-inducing plot twists so typical of Cox’s plays. The show keeps the sexy comedy, but the thriller has taken a completely new direction. I identify familiar shapes and forms, but they look enlarged, crooked, shrunken. A house of mirrors.

Now more than ever, Mercurial has its audience slip-sliding along the characters’ psyches. This reminds me of the sinuous early-stage process in which Cox seeks storyline avenues through the input of colleagues in the rehearsal space, dramaturgs during desk work, and audiences after scratch nights. Following a process as serpentine as its narrative, Mercurial has taken the leap from the scratch night world and still has fuel to go beyond its run at Riverside.

A play text morphing and swirling from showcase to showcase – Mercurial has had a bumpy ride, yes? NO. That’s just new writing. The endeavour is long-term and tangled, which is something we probably don’t talk about enough. The journey and its growing pains are quickly thrown under the rug. New plays take time and effort. Finding the right stopping point in a script is often hard. Not to mention the self-doubt whirlwind. And what playwright hasn’t experienced vertigo as their text is pulled towards many directions or, equally daunting, locked in when its presentation is nigh?

It is crucial to acknowledge that a performance is merely a snapshot of any project. Without a support system that normalises long-term creative processes, patience and curiosity shall be among the first things that artists sacrifice while revisiting a draft for the umpteenth time. An ongoing exploration that rises above a product-oriented culture might help build a more transparent and supportive ecosystem.

Mercurial won Best Show at the Bitesize Festival Awards while this article was in the works. We surely haven’t heard the end of Cox’s play, and, just like the show, this write-up might prove to be yet another mere snapshot in its ongoing evolution.

Mercurial runs on the 26 and 28 September at Riverside Studios.

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