7 Day Drunk – Exeter Phoenix

Writter: Bryony Kimmings

Reviewer: Joan Phillips

The Public Reviews Rating:

Performed and written by Bryony Kimmings, 7 Day Drunk is a new, one woman show in which Bryony sets out to investigate the relationship between her own creativity and alcohol.

The show is created only from material recorded during a 7 day experiment in which she drinks alcohol from10am – 7pm. During the experiment she is monitored and supervised by a psychologist, psychiatrist, neuroscientist and a GP. Bryony is kept at various states of intoxication but the levels are always enough to allow her inhibitions to relax and her ‘creativity’ to … does it flourish? … or go into freefall?

Invoking the memories of creative and artistic greats from Jimmy Hendrix to Oscar Wilde, and from F Scott Fitzgerald to Jackson Pollock she and her team explode the romantic myth connecting drugs to artistry. Do intoxicants transfer you to a magical place? Or do they release inhibitions for sensitive artists?

But this is principally Bryony’s story and an examination of her own volatile relationship with alcohol. Bryony bravely puts herself through a gruelling week and opens up her creative psyche for full view by the audience. From the moment she describes how she passed out drunk for the first time aged 12, to the end of the 7 day experiment where she can hardly hold her gaze at the camera, she is disarmingly honest about how drink affects her, her friends and ultimately, her own creativity.

The show starts with a ramble though childhood but we very quickly get to Day 2 of the experiment. If I was asked where she peaked, it would be here, with a very funny musical number. The rest of the week – and the show – went a little downhill from there. I would have liked more fun but it did affirm the depressing effects of alcohol, and maybe this was the point.

Bryony has some fun with the audience, inviting one to ‘knock back’ several shots of vodka and join in for parts of the show. It is a tremendously energetic performance with only a simple stage set up. There are very few props, quite a lot of mess and a screen to show recordings yet Bryony’s forceful personality and story keep our attention for the whole 70 minutes. And she was sober the whole time.