Theatre review: See Me! Hear Me!
By Kate Copstick Published: 24/8/2010

Two million people (80 per cent of them women and children) are sold into slavery each year. Worldwide there are ten million people enslaved. 300,000 Debt Bond Slaves keep Indian carpets cheap and available.

And if you don't want a carpet you can buy a slave at one of their charming Child Bazaars. In Dubai they hold Brothel Auctions where 10,000 girls are bought each year.

Kathleen Ann Thompson is a powerful, intense, intelligent performer, and this is her passion project but I have never before seen one tiny flaw so undermine a show.

As Thompson performs, on a screen stage left, photographs appear - of people and places. Sometimes text appears, sometimes it is superimposed. This is an accepted technique. But here the text is frequently in red or green with IMPORTANT WORDS printed in BLOCK CAPITALS for EMPHASIS. This Sun headline approach serves only to undermine the horrific information the text carries.

But you should see this show. Hear what Thompson has to say. The Quaker Meeting House is a Fringe gem that always offers thought-provoking stuff. So go and be provoked.

SEE ME! HEAR ME!
Venue 40, The Quaker Meeting House

Here is your fringe round-the world ticket. In a festival packed with
light comedy, it may be hard to spot this one as your choice
destination. But buy in, and you'll be swept away.

In a captivating performance spanning the globe, roles, gender and
ages, Kathleen Ann Thompson returns to the Venue 40 stage with a
stunning tour-de-force production so close to her heart, it's
contagious.

In an address following her sabbatical fact finding year, Cornell
Professor Gertrude Simmons accounts for her time travelling the planet
in a slide show, which inadvertently contains impersonations of people
she met en route. They all share - increasingly predictably - the dark
world of human trafficking, child labour and slavery. While the
despair may be acted, the anger is palpably real. If Kathleen Ann
Thompson's grace and skill cross the 't', then the soundtrack that
accompanies quotes and images on screen dots the 'i' in her mission to
transfer the audience to Cambodia, India, Uganda... The stories
introduce a world so close by and yet so conveniently hidden,
desperate for compassion and action. At one point I wanted to just get
on the stage and give her a hug - Kathleen that is, not to mention the
soldier's mum on her boy's tenth Birthday. Are there ever happy ends
in these realities?

Each of the first four people to leave the opening show told the venue
doorkeeper he must see it. All the others stayed for a Q&A session
with Kathleen. That's got to be worth more than several stars
plastered across a poster...

'All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men (and
women) do nothing.' Edmund Burke.

Go on, get on board.

Sarah Martin