Reviews 2012
Reviews 2012
✭✭✭✭✩
music by Amy Nostbakken, libretto by Amy Nostbakken & Nir Paldi, directed by Nir Paldi
Theatre Ad Infinitum Canada with Why Not Theatre, Factory Studio Theatre, Toronto
February 22-March 4, 2012
“A Death of One’s Own”
“It was hotter than normal the summer that I died”. This is the first line of the remarkable solo show by Toronto-born performer Amy Nostbakken--a solo show unlike any you have ever seen before. More than the paradoxical statement what sets the show apart is that for most of its 70 minutes it is sung, not spoken. There is no back-up musician. Nostbakken dressed in a pink party dress from the 1960s stands at an old-fashioned microphone in a pool of light an absolutely bare stage and sings a cappella, using the tone and tempo her delivery to underscore the meaning of her words.
The story written by Nostbakken and director Nir Paldi is said to be inspired by the lives and deaths of Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton--all highly creative, successful women who did not feel at home in the world, suffered from severe depression and took their own lives. The story’s closest parallel is to Path’s 1963 novel The Bell Jar. In both a young woman receives a coveted opportunity to enhance her career through an association with a big institution, moves to the big city where the institution is, falls in with a set of superficial women, becomes obsessed with a national tragedy, is encouraged to work by a benefactress but finds it impossible to do, moves back home with her mother and descended into deep depression.
In The Big Smoke, Nathalie, who has won plaudits in her native Toronto, wins a chance to go to London and compete with eleven others for the opportunity of having a her own show at the Tate Modern. Where the national tragedy in The Bell Jar was the impending execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, in The Big Smoke it is the terrorist suicide bombings on the London Underground on July 7, 2005, referred to in the UK as “7/7” just as the US refers to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as “9/11”. Nathalie becomes obsessed with the notion of being buried underground without air, much as Plath’s central character feels she is under an airless bell jar.
Nostbakken’s tales of her increasing feeling of isolation in the midst of society parties, nights out in dance clubs and unwanted advances from both men and women is purely descriptive. She tells us what happens and how it makes her feel, but never why she feels as she does. On the one hand, the experience of depression is not one that can be rationally explained. Part of the terror is that the sufferer does not know why she is responding as she does. On the other hand, Nostbakken’s narrative forces us to make the links in the action and thus become involved in creating the rationale for her impending demise.
Nathalie’s empathy with the victims of the 7/7 bombings, with seeing her boyfriend’s dog being torn apart by another dog before her eyes and of witnessing a bicyclist knocked down and killed at Seven Dials are more than merely commiseration. The pointlessness of the deaths make her feel the pointlessness of her own endeavours and she begins to identify herself with and even envy the dead. The terrible irony of Nathalie’s life in London is that the longer she tries to fight the feelings that are pulling her down, the more she moves past the time when medical intervention would help. By the time she gives up London to go home to her mother in Toronto, she has moved past the help her family GP can provide.
The Big Smoke takes us on a very dark and disturbing journey and, unlike The Bell Jar, offers no hope at the end. Anyone who has suffered clinical depression and has managed to overcome it will understand all too well the feelings that Nostbakken describes. In fact, the piece is so distressing that I would not recommend it to anyone who has felt unrelievedly under a dark mental cloud for the previous two weeks. The Big Smoke will not make you feel better.
If you are up to it, however, Nostbakken’s performance is absolutely extraordinary--somehow both emotionally raw and distanced at the same time. The reason for this is the delivery. Nostbakken’s singing both enhances the emotions she sings of and underlines the artificiality of the medium. She sings about sinking “low, low, low” into her bed has her voice descends with each word. That heightens the feeling at the same time we are aware of the technique.
The music is primarily jazzy with Peggy Lee as a prime model for Nostbakken’s agile, smoky voice. But the style changes with the subject from the Beatles to the Police, Nina Simone to Joni Mitchell. In many ways it is as if Nostbakken is rediscovering opera when she lengthens vowels, hits high notes, expresses excitement in vocal cascades, caresses or spits out words, isolates words or even syllables from each other with pauses and emphasizes the percussiveness of consonants.
What makes the show so extraordinary is the darkness of its content and the exuberance and precision of its form. It is the story of the loss of voice in a medium that celebrates voice. For the adventurous theatre-goer, this is a must-see.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Amy Nostbakken. ©2010 Ryan Garside.
For tickets, visit www.factorytheatre.ca.
2012-02-26
The Big Smoke