Some Demon
By Laura Waldren, Arcola Theatre, London
For the characters in Some Demon, a new play by Laura Waldren, time has stopped. Their lives have been put on hold since being admitted to an eating disorders unit for treatment.
It is a surreal but safe environment, overseen by two clinicians with seemingly endless compassion and, in the case of one, a very personal understanding of the illness. The patients are acutely aware of how their behaviour appears to others, how their appearance has at times frightened children, how they can’t stop moving—and how they find it almost impossible to change.
I must admit, I had arrived at the Arcola Theatre in London prepared for disappointment. Having seen so many plays and films about eating disorders, I was ready to be bombarded with all the ideas and tropes that we’ve come to expect. I came armed with my ED Bingo scorecard, ready to tick off the usual mentions (Bad Parenting, Control, Coping, Trauma) but at the end of the play it was left unmarked. In fact, Waldren joyously flips one of these old ideas on its head, making a running joke about how quickly the word ‘Control’ will be mentioned in therapy sessions. Other historical misunderstandings are also addressed, including the fact that this illness doesn’t just affect women and girls (although all the patients in the play are female) and that not everyone with an eating disorder is a low weight. Waldren is clearly a writer who is not stuck in the old ways of thinking about eating disorders.
The play starts with the admission to the unit of Sam, 18 years old and lost. Looking forward to university, where she’s due to study philosophy, Sam is fearful that she won’t get there at all because of the illnesses that’s interrupted her life. But she struggles to reconcile the need to overcome her fear of food and weight gain with the future life she desires.
Zoe is forty-something and has had the illness for 25 years. Despite her belief that she is nothing without the illness (a common idea in people who are unwell), she is the most rounded of the characters. It is Zoe who repeats the joke about control, Zoe who loves music, Zoe whose compassion for others shines through. Zoe’s vulnerability is disguised by her acerbic wit and nonconformity and, tragically, her belief that she can’t get better after so long is holding her back. I so wanted to jump into the play and tell her that the latest research shows that full recovery is possible, no matter how long you’ve had the illness!
While the other characters of Some Demon sometimes look to the future and the good that might fill their lives once they recover, the play feels very much about the here and now of recovery. You can’t put off doing the difficult thing and expect your life to change. You can’t start recovery tomorrow because tomorrow never comes. ED recovery is all about doing the right thing right now. Making the right decision today. Eating now. Not exercising now. It’s relentless. It’s not exciting. But that’s the way you get better. One meal at a time. One day at a time. It’s great to have goals, to have something to recover for, but you can’t skip the work you have to do today.
Much writing about eating disorders to date has felt like it’s looking to the past. And where many works about eating disorders seek reasons to explain the characters’ behaviour — Why are they acting in this way? What has made them the way they are? Who hurt them? — Some Demon is determined not to go there. Waldren keeps us in the here and now, which is exactly where eating disorder recovery needs to be.
This, Waldren’s first full-length script, won the prestigious Papatango New Writing Prize in 2023, and I feel it is well-deserved. Waldren has said that Some Demon was a ‘very difficult, personal but important play to write’ about a ‘still deeply misunderstood illness’. And while this play doesn’t attempt to explain eating disorders, it goes some way to moving on the conversation.