The Almighty Sometimes
With superlative performances and precision direction, Off the Ledge’s rendition of The Almighty Sometimes is an empathic portrait of how mental illness can complicate the business of becoming an independent adult. While it doesn’t sugar-coat the trials, Kendall Feaver’s internationally celebrated script contains all the ambiguities, quandaries and strange genius of disordered thought.
Winsome Ogilvie as Annie is a powerhouse. Her performance as the brilliant, funny and combative 18-year-old fills every corner of the stage with a machine-gun volley of random facts, tangential meanderings, unlikely metaphors and bitter accusations, all of which make sense according to the distorted logic of her internal world. Ogilvie does justice to the poetry and cadence writer Kendall Feaver sees in florid mental illness. The young actress transports us via Annie’s bizarre thought patterns into surreal otherworlds equally beautiful and disturbing.
If Annie is the whirlwind, her mother Renee (Elaine Noon) is a mountain. Elaine Noon imbues Renee with a solid calmness which draws off some of Annie’s energy, but not without being weathered by the constant barrage. As a teacher, Renee is used to dealing with a broad range of childhood behaviours, but she is tortured by doubt about choices made when Annie first started showing signs of illness as a pre-teen, when she was first put on trial after trial of antipsychotic drugs. Her patience with her daughter at her most abusive is near superhuman.
In spite of injuring his leg and being on crutches, Robert Kjellgren captures boyfriend Oliver’s shyness and his sense of humour. Kjellgren’s Oliver makes wry observations but compared to Annie seems emotionally awkward. His interactions with Annie at first are sweet and affectionate, finessing the timing of the dialogue. Later, as Annie’s disease blows out and becomes monstrous, Oliver seems to shrink in the relationship.
Finally, while psychiatrist Vivienne maintains a strict therapeutic distance, when faced with Annie’s decline Steph Roberts’s portrayal gives momentary flashes of emotion, which she then deftly covers over with an impassionate explanation of the need for objectivity in psychiatric practice. She makes this point so often, it seems perhaps to be a self reminder or a way to avoid answering Annie’s questions.
To say this production of The Almighty Sometimes is heartbreaking would undersell its vivid imagery and literary sensibility. This play is only on until 22 November so Canberrans will have to hurry if they want to see it.
Cathy Bannister
Photographer: Ben Appleton – Photox Canberra.
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