EDFRINGE REVIEW: Anatomy of Pain (Aoife Parr)

Anatomy of Pain - ★★★★☆ – Harrowing 

Aoife Parr
1-9 Aug
Review by Rebecca Mahar
 
Aoife Parr’s Anatomy of Pain, billed as “a true story of chronic illness, medical gaslighting and survival,” strikes at the agonising heart of living with a rare disease, chronic pain, and the fight to be seen, heard, and treated.
 
Written and directed by Parr as a reflection on her experience with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, Anatomy of Pain stars Klara Grapci-Germizaj as her analogue Alex, with Will Kirk as the Psychiatrist and Others. Framed within a therapy session, the play flashes back from her psychiatrist’s office to various points in Alex’s life, from before her diagnosis up to the present, as she relates her story. It is a raw look inside a life that, as a fellow traveller living with EDS, I found sharply resonant.
 
As Alex speaks, projections of fizzing bubbles and rippling orange-peach-red colours resembling the arthroscopic image of a joint linger on a screen upstage, visualising the indescribable. She and her therapist stand on opposite sides of the stage, speaking into microphones under stark lighting. When we break into the past, they swirl around the stage with crisp transitions between times and places, Kirk taking on the roles the doctors Alex has seen and the boyfriend she thought she could depend on.“You think your love is enough to stop me hurting?” Alex cries after a whirlwind recitation of symptoms, scars, surgeries, prescriptions, and side effects, when her boyfriend decides she is too much. 

Klara Grapci-Germizaj in Anatomy of Pain. Pic: Anatomy of Pain.
 
Grapci-Germizaj is sensational as Alex, flitting from hard-edged to hopeful to despairing. The pain she projects —physical, emotional, existential— is a palpable, and she navigates Parr’s harrowing script with subtlety and skill. Opposite, Kirk is versatile and specific in his instantaneous transition from character to character, filling out Alex’s world in a way that represents each of the individuals she encounters while giving them the same face of ignorance and misunderstanding.
 
Anatomy of Pain is a searing indictment of a medical system and a society that is not designed for, and resists understanding and adapting for, such rare and chronic illnesses as EDS. It points out the ways in which this is worse for women, who are chronically underdiagnosed and under-treated, particularly when it comes to pain. Its open and sudden ending is the reality of so many living with EDS: only questions, no answers, and the inability to leave as others can when their pain becomes too much.
 
Running time: 55 minutes with no interval
Venue: theSpace @ Surgeon’s Hall, Royal College of Surgeons, Nicolson St. EH8 9DH
1-9 August 2025
Time: 1:50pm
Tickets: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/anatomy-of-pain
 
To learn more about EDS or donate to Ehlers-Danlos Support UK, visit https://www.ehlers-danlos.org

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