Solpadeine is My Boyfriend

Writer-performer Stefanie Preissner stands alone on a mostly-unadorned stage, dressed in tracksuit and trainers. What appears at first to be a character piece about the listlessness of being a young, self-professed “doe-eyed hick” moving from the boondocks of Cork to the big smoke of Dublin belies something far darker — and infinitely more compelling.

 

Solpadeine is My Boyfriend is as erratic as its creator’s stage persona: one part dramatic exposition, one part frustrated social commentary, and one part therapists’ couch. Flitting around a vast, barren stage, Preissner delves beyond simple narrative into a troubling but entirely gripping stream-of-consciousness dissection of depression, addiction and the inertia of being young and socially immobile in post-recession Ireland.

 

But what makes Solpadeine is My Boyfriend so powerful is that its politics are refracted through the prism of one character’s tortured psyche: Preissner’s duel with her ‘black dog’, and her dependency on over-the-counter painkiller Solpadeine (a soluble cocktail of codeine, paracetamol and caffeine) come together in a tense primal scream of a play. Even the slightly hammy physicality of the piece can’t detract from its anguished catharsis, as Preissner walks a blurred line between reality and fiction – rought to a fizzing head when, midway through, she mixes and drinks the Solpadeine concoction onstage. As disturbing as it is, this ambiguity—is Preissner exploring her own demons, or playing a character?—and her confident, committed delivery make it impossible to look away.