The Ripple Effect

The Ripple Effect is not beautifully constructed. Self-consciously amateurish, it draws its cast from the recovered heroin addicts of the now-crippled Ripple Drug Services rehab program.

Compared to the professional standard of production now common on the Fringe, the script is simplistic and the delivery wooden. There are no fancy stage effects.  There are no "laugh till it hurts" moments. There are no soliloquies of heartbreaking beauty.

This play reminds us with visceral intensity that we are all relatively cosseted from the horrors of addiction, and the nightmare of drugs.  More than this, The Ripple Effect documents a crime in progress.  It's won't, they reveal, be on the news tonight, but hundreds will die. 

It's a crime where the government we voted for is sacrificing the lives of our fellow citizens for soundbytes and power. In the full glare of stage lights, The Ripple Effect asserts to show how, by butchering a nationally lauded drug treatment program in favour of statistic-friendly cut-price contractors, bureaucrats condemned thousands to a life of failure and despair. 

Although there are some genuinely innovative aspects to the production, it's the rawness of The Ripple Effect which makes it work. The sense of urgency and honesty that flow through it perform a kind of alchemy within the production. 

When it begins you'll hate it's preachiness, but by the end you'll love it's heart – heart which transmutes it's flaws into battlescars.