Inside

Thanks to a spate of kidnapping headlines, the strange and complex effects of Stockholm Syndrome are now well documented. One abductee, for instance, was offered access to phone and email without attempting to raise the alarm. Another was even taken on a skiing trip with her captor, during which she made no effort to escape.  

Stories such as these form the inspiration and a large chunk of the content for Rosie MacPherson’s harrowing but uneven one-woman show. Research detailed in the programme crops up under another guise in the play, which offers a patchwork account of confinement and abuse stitched together from a range of different cases. The unnamed speaker, also played by MacPherson, has been locked away in a basement for years, developing a complicated and conflicted relationship with the man imprisoning her, while constructing a fragile retreat in her mind.

MacPherson’s protagonist escapes into memory, clinging to the childhood she was snatched from and to the old routine of school. Although these brittle fantasies are effective in conveying the altered psychological state that is the product of captivity, the abductee’s sudden awakening to these delusions rings less true, managing the shift clumsily.

The script’s pick’n’mix of kidnapping stories, meanwhile, becomes increasingly evident as the piece progresses; it’s difficult to borrow from such a range of sources without producing something of an identity crisis. Brought to life with grimly naturalistic detail by MacPherson, this hour-long window onto the protagonist’s captivity is unremittingly bleak, but only patchily engaging.