Whenever I Get Blown Up I Think of You

39658 original

On the morning of 7 July 2005, the poet and performer Molly Naylor was on the London Underground, making her way back from a night out. Also on the train that day was a young man called Shezad Tanweer. As the train approached Aldgate tube station, Tanweer detonated a homemade bomb hidden in his bag, killing himself and seven others.

Whenever I Get Blown Up I Think of You follows Naylor as she picks up the pieces of her life in the aftermath of the attacks. At times this monologue is faintly reminiscent of Stefan Golaszweski’s highly rated recent solo work; there is a similarly pleasant poetic rhythm to Naylor’s script, and she makes frequent use of a second-person narrative to describe her own romantic encounters.

However, Whenever I Get Blown Up is a much less accomplished piece of theatre, with little substance to underpin Naylor’s stylistic flourishes. Being based on real-life events seems, in this case, to be a major constraint. Where a fictionalised account may have been able to explore far darker areas of her character’s psyche, Whenever I Get Blown Up instead meanders aimlessly from London to Cardiff to Cornwall with precious little character development or drama. Even the section in which Naylor recalls the immediate aftermath of the bombings lacks a sense of peril, and fails to capture the fear of being caught up in a terrorist attack.

There is a rather telling moment as Whenever I Get Blown Up comes to a close in which Naylor describes with mock-disappointment her psychological recovery going “without too much drama”, a sentiment that is sadly reflective of the production as a whole.