After a successful run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, The Dahlia Files is back and tucked behind a curtain at Glasgow’s 118 Studios for an intimate rediscovery. The one-person play is written and performed by the wonderfully energetic Trystan Youngjohn, who—as a self-professed true crime podcast fan—delivers a refreshingly critical meta-commentary on the genre.
The Dahlia Files focuses on the case of 22-year-old Elizabeth Short who, in 1947 was found cut in half in a parking lot, left for the vultures—the American press—to pick apart. In contrast with advertisements about the play, you are met with a sleek, film noir style set: a coat rack (with a coat and hat), a table/box, and a chair where, calmly flicking through the pages of a newspaper, is our protagonist.
Held hostage under the threat of audience participation, we are thrown into the character of Elizabeth Short, and the person she became after her murder with a distressingly raw monologue. Purple lighting enables a frantic resurrection of the Black Dahlia, and then switches back to normal to depict a full of life Elizabeth Short.
Youngjohn fleshes out the world around Short, giving us an insight into her family’s life and the treatment they received from the prying press after Elizabeth’s murder. Short is given a story other than her death—but then with a purple flash of the lights her body is slammed back onto the autopsy table, confuting us with our own morbid curiosity as we want to know more.
After a few slightly offbeat audience participation sequences that were more clowning than cabaret, a live interview is expertly conducted. Mimicking the tone all podcast content creators seem to possess, Youngjohn leans in with the questions we all want to know. Questions are fired and before you can get two words out, the microphone is ripped away and “A quick word from today’s sponsor Hello Fresh” is recited.
One of the most tastefully empathetic moments of the performance was in the form of a touchingly haunting dance with the coat stand. Using one arm through the sleeve of the coat, a convincing slow dance partner appears and Youngjohn manages to perform two parts simultaneously. This offers a break from the high pace and sends you into a sad reflection of Short’s life and exploitation after death.
Is true crime ethical? If not, then how can these victims have their stories told, and who can tell them? These are the questions The Dahlia Files raises. Macabre, wry, and introspective, this performance is one to catch for both true crime junkies and squeamish abstainers, to learn more about the life of someone sold to the internet after death.
Photo by Louise Anderbjörk