Weights Reviews
Plays International

Review from Plays International

Jeremy Malies, Winter 2005/6

In October 1978, Lynn Manning was shot through the head in a Los Angeles bar by a stranger who had taken a dislike to him. He was 23 years old. The bullet separated his right eye from the optic nerve and a day later surgeons removed what remained of his left eye.

Manning describes these experiences in his autobiographical one-hander Weights which has had a UK run taking in the Clocktower Theatre, Croydon. The author is a multitude of a man: actor, film-maker, teacher, paralympic silver medallist and judo world champion. He is also a writer of rare gifts and the piece constitutes a sustained prose poem.

The narrative includes an upbringing that featured an abusive step-father and spells in foster homes when his alcoholic mother proved unable to care for him. "Ma crawled into a wine bottle and stayed there a long time." The language ranges from taut, understated narrative to complex asides that are exhilarating in their structure and elocution, the metaphors firing off like darts. Flashbacks to boyhood and a child's capacity for wonder are contrasted with the horrors to come.

Manning was an accomplished painter before the shooting and he frames the stages of his life as if they were canvases, a device that underlines the discipline and clarity of the writing. The author is at his most affecting as he recalls morbid adolescent prophecies that he might lose his sight but would not let blindness catch him off guard. There are subtle Lear-like references to vision that are reinforced when Manning describes his first walk with a white stick: "Each step felt like falling down a cliff."

Shortly after being blinded, Manning told rehabilitation workers that society had been steering him away from his dreams for as long as he could remember. He describes the heightened perceptions that follow loss of sight, not with the platitudes that often accompany the subject but through closely observed and concrete details such as analysis of the Doppler effect of sound. "I made wondrous discoveries every time I went out. A whole new world was opening up and I cared about it."

The piece has everything that could be required of autobiographical drama; a charismatic performer, a compelling life story and a monologue that benefits from rare descriptive gifts. As Manning conveys the liberating effects of blindness he approaches the audience for a final, sustained burst of dense imagery that constitutes a hymn to the uplifting effects of creative endeavour.