| What: My Left Breast by Susan Miller When: October 10 -24, 2024 Where: Baxter Masambe, Cape Town Performer: Shannon Esra Director: Janet Baylis Lighting and sound: Barry Strydom Bookings: Webtickets See https://baxter.uct.ac.za/events/my-left-breast |
Exceptional theatre. Outstanding script. Superb performance by Shannon Esra in award winning play, My Left Breast by Susan Miller. Anyone who has lived with an illness such as cancer or has supported others living with a disease for a protracted period, knows how hard it is on all levels. The medical side – surgeries, tests, procedures is heightened by terror, anxiety and fear. There is a huge impact on family and relationships.
American writer and playwright Susan Miller’s autobiographical play, My Left Breast, is inspired by her own experiences. Miller won an Obie Award for the play. It is exquisite and elegiac writing. South African actor Shannon Esra delivers a knockout performance as Miller- nailing the New York accent and evoking an emotionally charged performance which entertains despite its subject matter. This review contains plot spoilers.
The play doesn’t follow a strict chronological order. The narrative loops around itself, revealing fragments which give it a jittery kind of pace and Esra imparts an edginess in the way she presents the material, which is masterful. Time becomes metaphorical rather than literal, measured by experiences, emotions and memories. Time is a nebulous construct in the greater scheme of things. When is the “right” time to get cancer”, poses Miller. When Miller found out she had breast cancer “everything was going right.” She had just won an Obie Award and had a new relationship. Her son was eight at the time.
Miller was spurred on by her son who needed her and she tells us (in the play) that her son Jeremy is now 20. Twelve years after diagnosis and here she is telling her story, very much through the gaze of motherhood: “A mother is a safe bet. She stays put. She shows up… “
There was a crushing disappointment when the love of her life, Frannie, declared that their relationship was over. Miller felt that she had come apart: “The thing that finishes us … The possibility of death nearly broke my head … “I was a body in disrepair…” She was in disrepair emotionally and physically. Early menopause (because of her treatment) didn’t help.
Miller urges us to gaze into the story and contemplate her lived experience, dealing with her illness and navigating her relationships as a bisexual/gay woman and choices made personally and medically. “I am a one-breasted, menopausal, Jewish, bisexual lesbian Mom, and I’m coming soon to a theatre near you.” That line gets laughs – uncomfortable laughs.
My Left Breast is a superbly crafted piece of theatre Shannon Esra, award-winning television, film and stage actress doesn’t miss a beat as she inhabits the body of Susan Miller in an intense 50 minutes. The stage is spare. Two chairs as props are subtly shifted to key in changes in location and time. Adroitly directed by Janet Baylis, Esra, invites us into this story, with a light touch. We must not look away. Esra is magic as she relates the interaction between Miller and her son who was terrified that he would die because his mom was ill. The mother son scenes are beautifully conveyed. Miller/Esra ferrets out the humour in the absurdity of it all. I think that we can all relate to how we embody pain of our loved ones – and fear.
The leitmotif of My Left Breast is the power of transcendence and transformation. Miller “is still here”. She muses: “I wanna grow old and I want to go to movies in the afternoon…” Love that. Miller had to come to terms with saying goodbye to her left breast, to her lover, Frannie, to her infant son. You say ‘goodbye’ to the person you thought you were.” She “cherishes her scar on her left breast. “The scar is a challenge to see ourselves as survivors… the body repairs,” she assures us. The take-home is that beyond all the challenges, we are “still here”. We need to cherish that and give ourselves credit. In general, women tend to be the primary care givers and this is foregrounded in My Left Breast.
My Left Breast is a very special piece of theatre which goes beyond illness memoir on stage and takes on a powerful theatrical resonance through the stirring and magnetic performance by Shannon Esra.
✳ Featured image: Shannon Esra in My Left Breast by Susan Miller, Baxter Masambe, Cape Town, October 10 -24, 2024. Pic supplied.
