Reviewed by Lox Dix­on.
Presen­ted as a part of the TAHI Fest­iv­al, 2022. 

Effy is a piece of phys­ic­al theatre per­formed by a masked act­or, and fea­tur­ing no verbal com­mu­nic­a­tion.

The show takes place in what ostens­ibly looks like a pub­lic park. A rub­bish bin sits on one side of the stage, an old wooden bench seat with ornate met­al detail­ing on the sides sits on the oth­er. The tit­u­lar char­ac­ter takes the stage dressed in high vis and armed with a large wooden broom. They pro­ceed to carry out manu­al labour tasks that read as an attempt to clean up the park area.

From the get-go the nature of the rela­tion­ship between Effy and the park is unclear. At first the situ­ation reads like they are start­ing their work day, enter­ing from off­stage as if they’ve come from some­where else, clean­ing up the park area and then sit­ting down on the bench to eat their lunch. Later in the show, Effy curls up to sleep on the bench, and I start to won­der wheth­er they live here, or spend their days here vol­un­tar­ily clean­ing rather than as an employ­ment arrange­ment.

There are two things that are abund­antly clear as the per­form­ance unfolds: Effy struggles to do a range of every­day things that most people would not struggle with, and Effy is lonely but des­per­ate to con­nect. The first plays out as evid­ent as Effy attempts to eat lunch and has a com­ic­al struggle with both the glad­wrap on their sand­wich, and a pair of rub­ber gloves.

The second is clear from the get-go, every action Effy takes is fol­lowed up with a look out to the audi­ence. The expres­sion on the mask, which reads from neut­ral to slightly pained through the dif­fer­ent light­ing sequences and changes in phys­ic­al­ity from the act­or (Brid­get Sanders), comes across as seek­ing our approv­al, or at the very least look­ing to con­nect with us.

The nar­rat­ive struc­ture is often hard to inter­pret giv­en the non-verbal nature of the piece, but the things I can say for sure are that this show fea­tures an epic recur­ring struggle between Effy and a duck, explores Effy’s need to express them­self cre­at­ively, and shows us that Effy is a per­son des­per­ate to make con­nec­tions with oth­er liv­ing things.

This show invites us to think about what human con­nec­tion looks like, offers a com­pel­ling look into neurodi­ver­gence, and leaves us both feel­ing a bit sorry for Effy who seems to long for a friend, and feel­ing a bit sorry for ourselves as we remin­isce on moments where we have tried our best to con­nect as our most authen­t­ic selves, and been rejec­ted or held back because of soci­et­al norms.

The level of nar­rat­ive able to be told, and the emo­tion­al res­on­ance of the show (includ­ing a healthy dose of laugh out loud humour through­out), are no easy achieve­ment for a show rely­ing for the most part on the phys­ic­al per­form­ance of the act­or on stage, and on the light and sound cues being expertly timed. Every­one involved in this show should be proud, and if the above sounds like a show you would enjoy, I highly recom­mend see­ing it.