Lists of Invisible Things
Scratch Theatre @ Nexus Gallery
6:00pm, Mon 21 Feb 2011
This was the first show I’d seen in the new Nexus Gallery space – a venue in which I’d only ever seen tattoo-and-grafitti-inspired visual art displays in previous Fringes. There’s now a tiny stage wedged in one corner, an equally-tiny “backstage” area for performers in another corner, and a bunch of really hot spotlights illuminating the space.
It’s important to preface this post with a bit of background information. Even as a large ocker sweary bloke, I’m not afraid to cry – at forty years of age, I’ve come to accept that emotions can well up inside me and express themselves in many ways. And I’ve even come to recognise the moments when I’m more susceptible to uncontrollable weeping – tiredness usually ups my emotional susceptibility, and being moody-drunk raises that a notch.
But Lists of Invisible Things had me weeping like a big blubbery mess at the end of the show… and with a full night’s sleep under my belt, and having imbibed only a quick half-price mojito from the Urban Garden Experiment in the Nexus courtyard bar, I can only pin the blame for my watery eyes on the wonderful material and even more wonderful performance of writer Caity Fowler.
Fowler plays a trio of female characters – the principle being the childlike Alice, the epitome of wide-eyed innocence, narrating her world through a squeaky-voice with heartbreaking naïveté. Alice’s mother and aunt also feature in other roles that are equally heartbreaking – but for completely different reasons – and all three women, all three moods, are handled with great delicacy.
There’s little in the way of support – some glass jars, a butterfly necklace, and a lot of glitter – but that’s fine… Fowler’s performance remains the centre of attention. Her musical accompaniment is wonderfully directed, too – the percussionist maintains a blank expression the entire show, with the pianist almost imperceptibly swaying from side to side, eyes wide and mouth slightly agape in a smile of wonder.
Now, I don’t mind admitting that I kinda missed some early plot pointers, and spent much of this performance convinced that Alice was some kind of semi-autistic, synaesthetic savant – so when the punch to the performance came… well, I was caught off-guard and completely overwhelmed, and the tears flowed. But the ascension to the ending is so wonderful, so heartwarming, so beautiful, that when Alice picked up the phone with a joyful “It’s for me!” as the lights are killed with a click… christ, I blubbered. Proper chest-heaving, barely controlled emotion, a big grin on my face that caught some of those salty, delicious tears.
And I can’t think of any other show that has had me that joyfully emotive, through sadness and joy.
I loved Lists of Invisible Things, I really did. I told everyone I could to go and see it; I felt ashamed that I couldn’t / didn’t write about it in-season (not that I think the above words are much good; for a far better written piece, see No Plain Jane’s review). But I got to bump into Caity and her pianist at the Fringe Club after their final show and rave about how much I loved it… again, it hardly feels like enough.