Violent fathers and Peruvian guerrillas
Daniel Nelson
First, let’s hear it for small London theatres and their intimate treasures.
The Barons Court Theatre has a postage stamp stage where heavy footsteps in the pub above can seem part of the performance and where pub customers looking for the lavatory are occasionally surprised when they open the wrong door to find a play in progress.
The modest surrounds are sometimes matched by audience numbers. I watched The Therapist with only seven other people.
But it provided a more engrossing evening than most mainstream London theatres.
It’s a simple concept: a woman — Gigi Guizado, holding the attention as soon as she starts speaking — tells an off-stage figure how she ran a yoga class for five Peruvian Shining Path guerrillas serving long sentences in a maximum security prison.
There are deft descriptive touches as the narrator recalls her fears about negotiating the intimidating authorities and guards and coming face to face with the leaders of the country’s bloodiest uprising. They include the leader of the pack, Abimael Guzman, the philosophy professor turned militant who died in 2021, aged 87.
Gradually, the four who engage in the lessons — Guzman declines, preferring to watch instead — become human beings in her mind rather than leg-trembling monsters.
What gives the play its point, however, because the monologue is about the narrator not the rebel leaders, seen only as static silhouettes on the wall, are the flashbacks to family life with her violent father, who she feared as much as she initially feared the prisoners. Her recollections, the blurb notes, are “a settling of accounts with past demons.”
The short play is about hate and strength and implicitly about how ultimately time dissipates their power.
“It’s difficult to help someone,” says her yoga teacher, adding, as she points to her head, “especially when the enemy is here.”
The Therapist was the winner Premio Luces 2019 Best Peruvian play: La Terapeuta de Gabriela Yepes (Teatro de la Alianza Francesa)
The Therapist is at the Barons Court Theatre, below the Curtain’s-Up pub, 28a Comeragh Road, W14 9HR, until 8 July. Info: https://www.baronscourttheatre.com/