Chelsea Woodley’s Enormity, Girl and the Earthquake in Her Lungs, in a production directed by Andrea Donaldson for Nightwood Theatre, opened at the Jackman Performance Centre on Saturday night. It’s enormously ambitious and performed with great skill and energy but I’m not sure it entirely works.
It concerns a young woman, Vic, who has just checked into some sort of shelter or psychiatric facility to get help for what slowly emerges as a cycle of abuse by just about everyone in her life. We are seeing what goes in her head for ten minutes while she psychs herself up for her intake interview while the six voices in her head (literally) dance around her. This takes ninety minutes.
In trying to get my head around this I find myself relying on Andrea’s notes more than I normally would. Here’s what she wrote (in part).
In its early days this play was intentionally extremely chaotic. Chelsea was experimenting with how the form could reflect the content of a woman in her mid-twenties in crisis, whose fragments of Vic’s mind also represent a multitude. The piece was full of codes and mystery and she left the lines open to being delineated by the creative team and actors. Through our time together, she moved toward a more organized chaos; building a play in which the central character, Vic, responds to six voices in her head, each with distinct drives and representations.
I can’t imagine what the early drafts were like if the final version is “more organized”. It still feels far more chaotic than it needs to be. Characters and episodes are introduced seemingly at random and there’s a lot going. on as characters on different trajectories talk over each other. I get that that’s how humans under stress think but I’m not sure it makes for satisfying audience experience. In fact I found myself disengaged a lot of the time.
All that said, technically there’s a lot to like. The performers throw themselves in to the “chaos” with great energy. Vivien Endicott-Douglas is convincing as Vic and Marta Armstrong, Liz Der, Philippa Domville, Bria McLaughlin, Sofía Rodríguez, and Emerjade Simms each contribute a lot as the “voices”. Young Noa Furlong is rather charming as the younger self. It’s quick fire, the movement is crisp and coordinated and it’s sometimes quite funny. I’m just not convinced the basic premise works. It feels like one of those pieces that’s more fun to perform than watch. YMMV.
Enormity, Girl and the Earthquake in Her Lungs continues at the Jackman Performance Centre until October 5th.
Photo credits: Dahlia Katz.
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