Two dates, a few months apart but on two different continents, are layered on top of each other. Actor and writer Kate Goodfellow plays herself in both, a bravely intimate portrayal of two seemingly unrelated days, one in Australia and one in the UK. The link between them is the temperature; it is 39 degrees and too hot.
By flipping deftly between these timeframes, Goodfellow explores the moment of the Australian bushfires and the fall out from them, experienced far away, displaced in a flat she hates. Through Joseph Ed Thomas’ dramatic lighting design, the audience are flipped from one moment to the other. At the same time, Goodfellow rapidly changes the frame through which she engages with natural disaster. She veers from the highly personal and individual to the political manifesto, holding forth on domestic politicians and global blindness. This switching is supported by Ruth Newbery-Payton, who plays her visiting sister but also fills in as news readers, horrified bystanders and government officials.
At the focal point of the performance is the beautiful set piece built by Chris Gibbs. A stubbornly hot radiator is flanked by bags for life stuffed with Goodfellow’s belongings. Above these is a luminous and backlit window. The blinds are drawn but the frame glows consistently, providing a dramatic and also flexible backdrop as it simmers red with fire or grey with the piercing light of London. It’s perennially closed blinds makes the space claustrophobic enough to house Goodfellow’s portrayal of mental health crises but also hints at the greater context of these; she is not suffering on a purely personal basis and mental health doesn’t function in a vacuum. Huge decisions made miles away slip in through the gaps in the blinds.
Goodfellow has a lot to balance in this hour long set, and it does sometimes run away from her. There is considerable comedy in the interactions between her and her sister, but the jumps from there to external tragedy and personal disaster are often jarring and uncomfortable. What is aiming for a Fleabag-esque candidness can’t be earnt in the short time and is instead disorienting. This is compounded by writing which is at times clumsy and hammy. Moments of spoken word feel misplaced amongst casual language and the dialogue slips between realistic and stylised too fast and frequent to track.
Despite its tonal issues, Goodfellow has created a hugely vulnerable and timely piece of theatre. The closeness to her own life is keenly felt and means that the audience are willing to follow her through it, even if the road is a little uneven.
The tone of the performance is set when I’m met on entry by a beaming steward, all warmth and reassurance. She directs me to empty seats and offers sunglasses and earplugs. Not your usual production, you might be thinking. But all becomes clear; she addresses the audience before the play starts and clarifies that this is a relaxed performance, meaning we can come and go, use the earplugs or sunglasses, do whatever we need to feel comfortable.
This is a great touch (and still all-too rare), but nothing more than you’d expect, given the content of the play. Glitch is a one-hander, with Krystina Nellis as our heroine Kelly, and Kelly is autistic – or, in her words, ‘weird. Diagnosably weird’.
Kelly is a likeable protagonist, trapped in a small town where it’s still ok to call someone living with autism a ‘psycho’, or ‘retard’. Nellis brings her to life well, including the odd amusingly wry remark and some lovely moments of warmth; Kelly’s experiences of losing herself to dance and singing in the questionable local nightclub, for example, are especially touching. She also handles the painful unfolding of Kelly’s grief well, and with sweetness; her dad goes quickly from being ‘fine’ to very, very not fine, and we see this all through Kelly’s straightforward, practical viewpoint. When she sits in a corner with her console and plays video games during his wake, we’re there with her and it’s clear it’s not only not ‘weird’: this makes sense.
Glitch is also something of an homage to video gaming and the communities around it. Kelly finds solace in games and, as the play continues, a true friend. This gaming connection is gorgeously brought to life by the screen on stage, which not only brings us Kelly’s words in real time but also the characters, rendered perfectly, and with changing backdrops (an affordance not otherwise possible in this black box studio), in 90s dot matrix-game style. It’s a lovely touch and enlivens the performance with just the occasional distraction when Nellis deviates wildly from the on-screen text.
This is one element that does, in the end, undermine the show a little; Nellis seems unsteady with the script, sometimes stumbling or repeating. The informal, chatty tone of Kelly’s delivery allows much of this to be absorbed into the performance, but occasionally it feels unnerving. And the narrative drive here can feel a little rambling, with the content perhaps demanding a little less than the full hour it’s given. Tightness would help let some of the funnier, and more powerful, moments really sing.
But all told, we leave on good terms with the small town of Sutward’s favourite ‘weirdo’. For, as the play asks, who gets to say what ‘normal’ is anyway – and why should we care?
