After the Heat, We Battle for the Heart at Vaults Festival 2016. Photo: Mark Dawson.
Conchita Cintrón is a legend. A real-life, patriarchy smashing badass, she was the most famous Torera (female bullfighter) of all time, slaying over 750 bulls in her fourteen-year career, and serving as the inspiration behind writer Tallulah Brown’s new play After the Heat, We Battle for the Heart. Cintrón’s story and her struggle, brought to life in a commanding performance by Paula Rodriguez, is twinned with that of Ruth’s. Ruth, portrayed with tender empathy by Jennie Eggleton, is a suicidally depressed, recently fired nobody living in modern day London in an underwhelming relationship.
On the surface, these seem like two stories that don’t have much to do with each other. However, the parallels these two contrasting women have are teased out and woven together such that After the Heat, We Battle for the Heart becomes a moving and inspirational experience. The women of the piece are undoubtedly the stars of the show, with Eggleton’s mousy, personable Ruth delivering her internal thoughts as a monologue with brief breaks to converse with her boyfriend Sam (Josh Taylor). Rodriguez’s segments are more naturalistic, sharing charged, dialogue driven scenes with Fed Zanni, Cintrón’s bullfighting teacher Ruy Da Cámara.
Needless to say, Cintrón’s segments are the one’s that immediately grab the audience’s attention. Rodriguez gives a passionate performance bolstered with the kind of grace and force demanded of an actual Torera, while her verbal (and sometimes physical) sparring with Ruy makes for some riveting scenes. However, it’s Ruth’s segments that tie the themes of the piece together. While Rodriguez’s scenes tell a relatively straightforward tale of a woman fighting against what’s expected of her by society, Eggleton’s scenes tell an altogether more personal, intimate story about losing and regaining one’s sense of self. In essence, while Cintrón is a woman who knows who she is and is forbidden from being it, Ruth is a woman who has no idea who she is, because she’s told to be so many different things by everything and everyone else in her life. Cintrón has the external fight, while Ruth has the internal fight.
It’s an inspired combination, and once the second act gets going these themes rise to the surface of the play and both storylines become as engaging as each other. I say storylines when I wish I could say characters, but where the piece comes up short is very much in its male characters, specifically in Sam’s case. This has nothing to do with the performers, as Taylor and Zanni are fine actors, and Zanni especially brings Ruy’s slightly overseen hard-nosed, softhearted tutor character to life with relish. Yet while Taylor does what he can with Sam, the character just doesn’t need to be on stage. Eggleton’s a born storyteller who carries whole portions of the show on her own. We as an audience can empathise with Ruth’s position whether seeing the two of them go to a disastrous salsa class, or coming back from one of Sam’s football matches together. Taylor’s not a bad actor, but when all his character’s doing is reinforcing what we already know about Ruth, it’s difficult to know what he’s doing there.
There’s may be some iffy dialogue choices, and the pacing of the piece doesn’t really settle until the start of the second act, but once everything comes together, the strength of its character writing and lead performances overcome everything else. Excellent direction from Carla Kingham gives the piece focus in the character arcs, the settings and staging, including the subtle changes in light, and the performer’s physicality. It’s an unabashedly emotional piece that wears its proudly feminist heart on its sleeve.
After the Heat, We Battle for the Hearts was on as part of Vaults Festival 2016. Click here for more of their programme.