Bright Places
Nottingham Playhouse, 26th September 2026
At the opening of Bright Places, we are introduced to three actors dressed in signature colours who explain they are about to tell the story of Rae Mainwaring, the author of the piece. Yet confusingly Rae is not called Rae here, she’s called Louise for reasons that are not entirely obvious. All three actors play Louise to a greater or lesser extent and by means of props or costume, transform into all the other characters in Louise’s story.
An energetic young woman in her early 20s with a love of theatre and dancing all night, Louise experiences worrying symptoms that she fears are signs of cancer. When a brain scan shows up the titular bright places that indicate multiple sclerosis, Louise struggles to adapt to the life-changing news that she has a degenerative and incurable condition. Louise’s ups and downs are played out through a series of sequences accompanied by bold projections, pulsing beats and dancefloor classics. The show lacks pace at times and overly long gaps in dialogue hopefully can be tightened up as the production continues its tour of England.
In green as Actor 2, Aimee Berwick is the most compelling and competent performer, her confidence and versatility making her the easiest of the three to warm to. Yellow Actor 1 (Lauren Foster) has strong presence and excels most in a breakdown sequence with an inner saboteur figure called Myleene. As blue Actor 3, Rebecca Holmes does well with perhaps the widest range of supporting roles, yet a lack of projection meant some lines were lost by the back rows.
A functional, vibrant set designed by Gemma Caseley-Kirk hosts the action well, although the actors’ faces were lost several times in two locations where lighting was obscured by horizontal beams. Creative captioning is included at each performance.
There is a danger with such work that it can all feel a bit worthy, but this show for the most part manages to avoid sentimentality and earnestness. There are some important messages about the need for greater awareness of hidden disabilities and for individuals not to be totally defined by conditions such as MS. Bright Places is billed as a ‘three-woman, one-woman show’, which is an interesting device but also its major flaw. We are offered little opportunity to get any real sense of who Louise was before her diagnosis and by fracturing her character across three actors, there is a lack of cohesion which makes it difficult to feel much empathy for her.
Bright Places is directed by Jo Gleave and is on tour until the end of October.
