DEAR ANNIE, I HATE YOU

Riverside Studios

★★★★

“Ipema is a wonderful storyteller. She leads us through her story with both humour and a certain poetry”

It’s a dangerous thing, walking out your front door. Especially for Sam — because there’s a ticking time bomb nestled in her brain. A clipped, but still very dangerous little aneurysm which she not-so-affectionately refers to as “Annie”.

Dear Annie, I Hate You is Sam Ipema’s autobiographical journey through young adulthood and the event that stopped her cold at just 20 years old. She weaves a lovely, warm tale about growing up with her adopted brother Micah, who lives with Down’s Syndrome. They pretend to be superheroes, they revel in imagination together, and he thinks of her as his own personal Batman — until Sam realises that other kids her age don’t think that’s cool anymore. She tells Micah to get his own friends, as she gets her own too. The classic ups and downs of adolescence ensue. There are boys, there’s gossip, and through it all, Sam is just trying to figure out who she is and what she wants. She falls in love with soccer, proudly becoming the only woman on a Division Four men’s team… then she sustains a head injury in a match, and all hell breaks loose. It’s lucky, she’s told, that she had the scans — that her aneurysm was found before it burst, potentially killing her. But how can you tell someone it’s lucky to find out that there’s a bomb in your head?

Ipema is a wonderful storyteller. She leads us through her story with both humour and a certain poetry. When she engages with the audience, you can tell they’re charmed by her. The personification of her aneurysm, “Annie”, played by Eleanor House is nothing short of sublime, especially as she introduces herself. She’s chaos incarnate, but she’s also desperately trying to get Sam to pay attention to her, almost as though she has more concern for Sam’s life than even Sam does. The performances are beautifully aided by simple, but effective set design by Hugo Dodsworth and the videography work from Douglas Coghlan and Dan Light is exceptional. The analog media on display here is a fun and interesting addition, as it beckons us (well, some of us, I’m sure) back to our own childhoods. But there’s one scene in particular that really makes it feel beyond genius — when Sam places one of the many televisions over Annie’s head and walks us through the procedure she underwent, having her aneurysm clipped. It’s definitely a bit graphic, but it’s also fascinating and viscerally real.

As we arrive at Sam’s recovery, it does feel a bit like something is missing. It’s all a touch too neat. Sam talks about the difficulties of her recovery, the excruciating pain, the loneliness of it all, and the existential dread that comes with knowing that “Annie” could still burst and potentially kill her at any moment. Yet for some reason, it doesn’t feel like it quite lands the emotional punch that it should. But maybe that’s the point of it all, really — even these massive, traumatic events are just blips in the overall scheme of things. No matter what, we’ve just got to keep putting one foot in front of the other.