RUNT | Dee, Cornelius and Wilks

It is always satisfying to see a consummate master at work, and Nicci Wilks previous works speak for themselves. She has a reputation for powerful gritty works that wrestle with real life issues and cut to the bone (Animal, The Long Pigs, SHIT, Tale of Two Harpies). Sometimes they are funny too. But they are nearly always searing and dark. Plays about the underdog, physical theatre that puts the outreaches of suburbia onto our most revered inner-city stages, subverting expectations about power and powerlessness. Dark clown that summons the blackest humour and the most dangerous thoughts.

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In Runt I see these themes encapsulated within a dark character, a clean stage, a deceptively simple set, and a small body ready to fight and fight and fight. Our title character comes from a life of deprivation and competition, where every scrap is fought for, where every skerrick of affection must be captured through violent interjection. Performed in the round, with beautifully pointed lighting and a stunningly effective, deceptively simple soundtrack. I was really moved by the performance and the character, and it has given me much to chew on, on injustice, on society, on our very human need for our relationships to be mutual.

Our Runt is telling her life story, from her arrival at the end of a long line of other rowdy children. Her small body vying for attention at school and experiencing further cruelty and injustice. A relationship imbued with so much promise and delivering the same package of pointed unfairness once again.

The metaphor of the drowned litter always present in the giant sack that contains the growling masses of unliberated runts. The sack is the sole prop, the literal place from which she escapes, the metaphor of the drowned souls, and something else too. The place from which she liberates herself and others. And finally, the safe, the familiar, the most trustworthy of bolt holes.

Wilks voice is huge. The tiny person who truly can fill a whole theatre. The script is half a kind of poem, a self-soothing chant, undulating also to a shout and a screech. It is sometimes the words you whisper to yourself when no one is around, sometimes with riffs of poetry like a Shakespearian spell. Sometimes a desperate memory recanted like a proof of purchase, like a condemned man’s final accounting to a judge who has already tied him to the mercy seat.  

I see a mind that has gone mad with neglect. Sparking with ferocious energy, and willing to fight and train and struggle. But not understanding the why, not understanding how casual cruelty can be inflicted with such impunity. Now too far gone to truly understand how to conduct itself to get the outcomes its looking for. But still so full of life and sun and need and want and so much to give, and so ready to receive. Ready to emancipate all the others that are tied up in the sack too, even knowing they might not make it, but giving them a chance to run anyway. Wilks writhes and runs and staunches out. She boxes and climbs and huffs and puffs and drags herself like a disembodied changeling, like a lost child, like a teen runaway.

We are ruled by the body. We think our chattering minds are leading this affair but really it is the body that sings and screams, the skin that hungers for touch. You can go mad if no one touches you. You can go mad if love gets all twisted up. We know that children need safety to grow strong and true, they need enough attention to validate them, that emotional maturity and regularity is directly linked to the security we experience in our formative years.

There is something so deeply moving, so humanising, to be reminded that rejected bodies sing so very loudly to themselves. We live in a world where different is not just misunderstood and othered, but dehumanised. Physically removed from the room. Disabled people, poor people, people from other countries, the presumptions of their inability to really feel ‘like us’; these are the narratives that fuel a thousand prejudices. These are the prejudices that prevent our minorities from accessing essential services, that make accessible buildings a big wow rather than a standard issue. That close the borders, that cut the funding, that limit and reduce and restrict and control.

This is a story about one wee person. But like all good theatre, this has a universal lesson, about big and small, about how power corrupts absolutely, about how the system will always be stacked against us. We cannot go it alone. We must provide shelter and hands up and space. A story for the times, where inequity is the greatest threat of all. Runt is the 99%. There is a boot on our neck and the boot makes damn sure you’ll stay down. But what if you made it out? As the show says, greatness forgets runtness. Would you even truly want to be the 1%? None of us are free, until all of us are free. What good is a golden cage?

A powerful work for those that enjoy transformative and evocative theatre.