Written & Directed by Xavier Coy
The New Theatre, Newtown
Full disclosure: writing this review has taken me a couple of weeks since opening night. The reason? This piece of work challenges, questions and confronts you, and in all honesty, it took me a while to process it all. This new work by Xavier Coy was the winner of the 2022 Silver Gull Play Award and is making its world premiere at Newtown’s New Theatre. Fighting is a peek into a day in the life (and mind) of one man as he traverses the highs and lows of bipolar. Not only does he battle with the people in his life, but also with the voices inside his head.
The central character works in a phone shop owned by an elderly couple who enjoy a very active sex life. In contrast, he is desperately lonely. During the course of the day he is confronted by his ex-girlfriend who is now engaged. He has a panic attack. He has a date that evening with a woman he quite likes. It is disastrous and uncomfortable to watch. The voices in his head escalate as his mind begins to crumble with despair. The voices present opposing potential courses of action as he descends into a major depressive episode. It now becomes heartbreaking to watch. The phone rings. He breathes. He lives to fight another day.
This is a play that pulls no punches and does not hold back in its stark, confrontational writing – both in language and in breaking the fourth wall with the central character directly addressing the audience. The cast – Jay James Moody, Sophie Highmore and David Woodland are all excellent and challenge the audience with their delivery. How the lead character describes how his spiralling depression and cocktail of medications make him physically feel is visceral.
Fighting is one 90-minute act played straight through, and for 90 minutes, the tension is relentless, putting the audience well and truly into the mind of someone living with bipolar disorder. The audience feels everything that the main character feels—excitement, frenetic energy, confusion, turmoil, awkwardness, embarrassment, and exhaustion. By the play’s end, the audience starts to understand how hard it is for the lead character to get through each day.
In the climactic scene, the two voices argue more and more violently with each other, culminating in one of them telling the lead character to suicide. The emotional intensity here was devastating.
A stark set by Tom Bannerman and some clever lighting cues designed by Robin Legal almost become characters in their own right and deftly help tell Coy’s very personal story. The playwright wrote Fighting in the weeks following his bipolar diagnosis and set out to (somewhat successfully) demonstrate that people with bipolar disorder are not crazy. To put it in his words, I didn’t want to write trauma porn. Coy cleverly uses a brilliant mix of comedy and tragedy to engender empathy from the audience, ultimately leading to a bit of understanding.
Fighting is an uncomfortable watch but is also a very important one. It shows us that even though we all experience sadness, fear and loneliness, in bipolar it is so much more intense. Coy perhaps says it best himself: It’s funny. All this – I know it’s funny. But the thought of laughing feels entirely alien.
Fighting is written and directed by Xavier Coy and is playing at the New Theatre, Newtown through to 12 April.
In his past lives, Damien was a drag queen and musical theatre actor. He made his stage debut as a fat cow in a school production of Joseph in 1984. He holds a BA with a major in drama from the University of Newcastle. He is completely obsessed with musical theatre – especially Broadway divas.
Since relocating to Sydney at the beginning of 2024, he attends every musical he can get to and lives with his partner and grumpy 12-year-old poodle.
His claim to fame is that he once met Patti Lupone in New York and she was nice to him.