Blanket Ban @ Underbelly Cowgate
Marta Vella and Davinia Hamilton's show dives headfirst into Malta's abortion ban, and offers a space where lived experiences around abortion can be felt in their entirety
“Sometimes, I am afraid of this play," actor and activist Marta Vella informs the audience in the opening scenes of Blanket Ban (in which she plays herself), as the ever-present sounds of waves and lapping water hum in the background. Combining storytelling with excerpts from three years’ worth of recorded Zoom interviews carried out by Vella and co-writer Davinia Hamilton, the saltine sting of fear can be sensed from the very start of the pair’s Edinburgh Fringe debut, which dives headfirst into an exploration of the total ban of abortion under Maltese law.
Yet, much like the testimony from which it was born, Blanket Ban is not simply a tale of despair, but a space where the depth of lived experiences surrounding abortion (including Vella and Hamilton’s own motivations for writing the play) can be felt in their entirety. Joyous dance moves, kitsch colours, and witty accounts of non-existent, strictly Catholic sex education, allow a love for Malta and its otherwise progressive legal landscape to emerge alongside a palpable anger at its failure to safeguard the most fundamental of reproductive rights.
Clever staging by directors Sam Edmunds and Vikesh Godhwani ensure that small details from occasionally grainy zoom footage are given space to settle like sea salt on skin: the fear in the voice of a woman calling from her office in the dead of night so as not to be overheard. The defiance of a pro-choice doctor whose voice catches mid-sentence in spite of herself. The heartbreak of a mother forced to carry an unviable, and much longed-for, pregnancy to term.
Just weeks after the overturning of Roe V Wade (and days after the UK Government’s bill on the rights of women and girls was amended to remove references to ‘sexual and reproductive health and bodily autonomy’), the political urgency of Blanket Ban cannot be understated. It is both a heart-shatteringly brilliant piece of theatre and a campaign-backed call-to-action: a cautionary tale against any tacit certainty that abortion provisions cannot, and will not, be expunged on a political whim. As the dark tides of a global crackdown on reproductive rights creep ever closer, Blanket Ban is a stark reminder of the need to fight back and resist, together, if we are to stand any chance of staying afloat.
Blanket Ban, Underbelly Cowgate (Big Belly), until 28 Aug, 5pm, £11-13
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