Fix

Addiction is not an easy subject to tackle, but Fix by Worklight Theatre does so with real compassion and grace – through drama, audience interaction and comic songs about biochemicals.

Working from two years of research, the three performers are careful to point out that the characters in the show are composites of a large number of people; are representative. There’s Zach, deftly played by Fin Cormack, who embodies the hope and humiliations of having a gambling addiction. Maggie (Fiona Whitelaw), whose husband has a sex addiction and who offers one of the most charged moments when she contacts the woman he has had over 30 hours of online sex with in two weeks. And Robyn (Rianna Dearden), a therapist who gives a genuinely affecting description of watching someone’s resolution wobble at the end of a session, of not knowing whether they’ll have relapsed in the time takes her to drive home.

These human dilemmas are explained with research and science – and some of the statistics are stark. There are 8,700 betting shops in the UK. The average age that people first watch porn is now 11. Over 2 million people suffer from addiction in Britain today. What Fix does compellingly is to disguise education as entertainment, but in doing so—and with only an hour to unfold—the storytelling is a little sidelined, and information dominates over insight. It’s this that stops Fix, though genuinely engaging, from becoming truly transcendent, transfixing – from being the kind of show that audience’s thoughts will be drawn back to, again and again.

 

https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/fix