Writer: Mimi Collins
Director: Ellie Pyle
Featuring the voice of David Nett
A hell-of-a-lot of shows at this year’s Fringe celebrate feminist awakenings. Needless to say, these are almost always produced and performed by women, which shows the amazing and fortunate change that our culture and society have experienced since the #MeToo moment. Some of these shows present this awakening crudely, with women thrusting their newfound confidence and not entirely unmotivated man-bashing in our faces; others proceed more cautiously, with a fragile sense of balance. But, as a member of the opposite sex, I can’t help noticing that none of them show “his” side very much; none tell the man’s version of the story.
This seems to also be the case with Mimi Collins’ Good Girl, although here the absence of “his” side is less a limitation than a deliberate choice, as Collins builds a remarkably balanced and thoughtful narrative arc around her protagonist’s gradual unravelling. Having caught her young and potent husband cheating on her, she unwittingly decides to try saving the marriage through the tedious (yet plastically depicted) process of couples therapy, only to descend ever deeper into a universe of utter frustration and increasing isolation. There is, however, a revelation of sorts in the third act, and we are all happy to be first-hand witnesses to it: Mimi has a surprising self-awakening that takes her into emotional worlds whose depths she might never have probed otherwise.
On the whole, Mimi’s show is a cathartic confession about disappointment, not only for herself as a deceived young wife, but also for the audience, who gets to peek into the intimacy of compulsion, fixation, love, and whatever it is that keeps young couples together for a few reasonably happy years at the beginning of a modern marriage. Through her carefully constructed narrative, weaving an intricate pattern of distancing and coming back together, we are made to experience the emotional rollercoaster that some, if not many, of us have experienced at some point in our lives.
All this makes for a unique solo performance, but MImi’s show has an additional structural effect: unlike others, it successfully demonstrates that theatre has become personal enough to make possible, through such minimalistic yet expressive means as Collins’ acting and her beautifully paced story, the intricacies of human relationships in vividly painted detail. Requiring almost no set at all, her monodrama is nevertheless capable of adroitly putting together a remarkably complete portrait of a relationship falling apart, and of a woman discovering, in the process, that the collapse of one life can sometimes be the beginning of another.
Runs until August 31 | Image: Contributed
