Red Like Fruit ****

What is the difference between trauma and experience?

Lauren is a journalist working on a domestic violence story. These cases are depressingly commonplace, but this one appears to have an undertone of male entitlement. The antagonist, Andrew, works for a politician. The victim of the assault once worked alongside him but has not had her contract renewed. Andrew, chillingly, has been welcomed back to the inner sanctum.

Lauren prods at the story. Andrew’s boss peddles a party line on events. Andrew displays contrition and has sought counselling. His version of events has a hint of revisionism, as he refers to an open-hand slap. This sounds like spin to Lauren, a polished version of the truth. The victim, Brittany, lost two teeth and says she was sexually assaulted in the aftermath. A neighbour, Gladys, was fleetingly interviewed by the police. When Lauren follows up, Gladys’s recollection suggests something more violent and her character reference for Andrew is damning. Lauren manages to speak with the doctor who treated Brittany, who recalls that her injuries made her look like a car crash victim.

Brittany’s voice on events becomes undermined. She is labelled an attention seeker, leaning into the idea that she sought violent conflict. Hints are left trailing about childhood trauma and Lauren is told of her tendency to drink too much. Her name even seems to do her few favours. When Lauren speaks with her, she now seems to doubt herself.

Lauren is a professional journalist, but traumatic memory muscles kick in. She was sexually assaulted as a 15-year-old, but familial pressures meant she could not speak up. This is mirrored by events two years later, when she visits her older cousin. She goes for a night out with him, illegally drinking alcohol, awaking to find him on top of her. She is haunted by the event, agonising over whether this constituted rape.

Red Like Fruit’s staging is somewhat unusual. Lauren (Michelle Monteith) sits on a spotlit chair on a high stage. She asks Luke (David Patrick Flemming) to voice her words, which he delivers next to a lectern below. They occasionally break the narrative, with him checking in on her, or her interrupting to sanity check the events, or at times her asking him for his opinion.

Both performances are strong and measured. There is an obvious empathetic relationship between them. Flemming’s narrative style gives gravitas to the events being recounted, yet delivered with soft hands. Monteith’s physicality is the embodiment of emotional recall, at times haunted, uncertain, traumatised. This is a most powerful piece of writing by Hannah Moscovitch, the themes glaringly obvious and current: consent, labelling, domestic abuse, entitlement.