Writer/Performer: Katie Reddin-Clancy
Director: Abigail Graham
Reviewer: Lela Tredwell
NOMINEE FOR BEST NEW PLAY AT BRIGHTON FRINGE 2018 BY WRITER AND PERFORMER SEMI-FINALIST OF ‘SO YOU THINK YOUR’E FUNNY’ AT EDINBURGH FRINGE
With its bold imaginative exploration into life’s purpose and our connection to the spirit world, End Game holds its European premiere at the Brighton Fringe. Unlike it’s namesake play by Samuel Beckett, this End Game doesn’t see its main characters doing much waiting. Once it gets going, the souls requesting an audience come thick and fast.
After a heart attack at age 80, while singing ‘Que Sera, Sera’ in Japanese, cabaret performer Joanie finds herself in Hades. It is now time for her ‘Soul Review’ (“Never read them, Darling”). While Joanie expects to see her show reel, her spirit guide Pam has something else prepared. Much to Joanie’s annoyance, she is confronted with another woman’s life decisions. The play sets out to explore the impact Joanie had on this young woman, despite barely having been in her life, and touches on why it matters most in the long life of Joanie.
Born out of writer Katie Reddin-Clancy’s preoccupation with the spirit world and mediums, this is a darkly humorous solo show imagining a fantasy afterlife whereby the scales are balanced according to whether a soul learned their lessons during their time on Earth. Evoking the spirits of Sliding Doors, Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library, Mitch Albom’s The Five People You Meet In Heaven and Charles Dickens The Christmas Carol, this show is coupled with a vivacious, unapologetic energy.
Writer and performer, Katie Reddin-Clancy has a very vibrant and warm presence on stage. She delivers her jokes with a twinkle in her eye and changes wigs like a pro. There is no doubt that she is a talented performer with a keen sense of comedic timing, who has created a wide range of engaging roles to play, many of which are funny or intriguing, but the speed she jumps between characters is intense. With so many roles, and also the roles’ parallel lives, to juggle, the effect gets dizzying. It’s a character carousel that feels more like the Waltzer. As the show ramps up the vortex, the narrative becomes increasingly harder to follow with some events feeling out of order and on the odd occasion even upside down.
The humour and intrigue of Joanie’s predicament allows us to permit the show a certain amount of artistic indulgence but the ambition of the work to spread across multiple realms, means the themes the show addresses do not feel fully fleshed out. Regardless of the promise set forth at the start of the show, we don’t get to know the eccentric, charming Joanie on a deeper level. Instead, she is judged on the five minutes she was deemed a mother and we are catapulted into the lives of Eva who lacks the same charisma. For a play that doesn’t hesitant to take a poke at the patriarchy, it is disappointing to see it make the sum of a woman’s life all about someone else, even when Joanie has chosen something different for herself.
Even though the judgements of the spirit guides could do with some questioning, the show is vivaciously performed, darkly humorous, and full of life. It is a solo show with a Hell of a lot of spirit, but it could use some more space and a stronger connection to get its message clearly across the divide.
Reviewed on 10th May
