Reviews: Hard to Swallow by Mark Wheeller

Hard to Swallow is a true story about teenager Catherine struggling – and ultimately dying – with the eating disorder anorexia nervosa. The play's structure is taken from Catherine's seven-year journey with anorexia, as reflected upon by her mother Maureen Dunbar, who wrote a book (which later became a film too) about her daughter.

Wheeller has used the book, as well as interviews with Maureen, to make a semi-verbatim play, with Maureen featured as the central narrator. Added to her narrative is research into eating disorders, and some nonverbatim scenes.

Wheeller has used this fusion style of narration throughout his career, and he would often stage his plays with his own youth acting group. This was the case with Hard to Swallow as well, which makes the text particularly useful for school productions.

As Wheeller's approach and style is both creative as well as verbatim, it engages the younger audience who may switch off during a series of monologues.

Hard to Swallow features in some drama exams as a set text, and I still use it today in my drama department in a scheme on Frantic Assembly and physical theatre. It can be used in so many ways within a school and Drama department context.

I have had students who have asked to step out temporarily, or have made disclosures, while working with the text, but they have never been negatively affected by exploring such a sensitive text and topic.

It has always done what Catherine, and subsequently her now sadly deceased mother Maureen wanted: it has helped people going through the same experiences and issues as Catherine did. It has also done what Wheeller additionally hoped the text would do and served as an excellent play text to be explored in Drama lessons and engagingly performed by young people.