Female resistance fighters, dream analyses, Freud, solastalgia (the pain experienced when there is recognition that the place where one resides and that one loves is under assault), trying to remember a mission and how it ended, sorting through fact and imagination: these are all topics that, when weaved together, should produce something moving and enthralling. However, Dora does no such thing.
With a bare bones set, lighting setup and sound design, there’s a heavy reliance on acting, physicality and script to carry the play. While no concrete criticisms can be made about the satisfactory acting from Phil Roberts (Freud) and playwright Wendy Woodson (Dora), the script itself is too dense, dry and repetitive to be able to fully immerse the audience. A lot of the dialogue is flowery and rhythmic, perhaps better suited to the page than spoken aloud; Dora’s interrupted, descriptive, choppy kind of conversations quickly grows tedious, the actual narrative itself becoming abstract and losing impact.
Considering the play touches on such weighted, charged topics, there should be a good deal more emotion than what is presented – the curiosity that some of Dora’s hysterical reactions evoke is never realised. By the time the narrative twists itself and there’s an actual turn of events, it’s too little, too late.
