Arts & Culture

What: Performance Review
Where: Morning Parade Coffee Bar, 256 Crawford St.
When: Now until Sun., March 30
Highlight: Immersive staging with lattes and literature to enjoy before the show
Rating: NNNN (out of 5)
Why you should go: It’s a thoughtful and kinetic autobiographical narrative

IF YOU SEE a lot of theatre (and especially if you frequent Fringe Festivals), there’s a good chance you’ve seen an autobiographical solo show in which a creative-type rants about various day jobs they’ve had while trying to make it big as an actor and/or writer. On paper, Rosamund Small’s latest play, Performance Review, seems like it might be precisely that. Small plays herself, regaling the audience with tales of the least pleasant ways she’s managed to pay her rent.

If that elevator pitch is already beginning to make your eyes roll, I implore you to take a chance on this show. Small is no ordinary writer, and Outside the March (OtM) is no ordinary company, as both have ably demonstrated in their previous collaborations on Vitals and TomorrowLoveTM. Though what they’ve produced here might not exactly be a subversive reinvention of the familiar unhappily-employed-monologuist template, it’s easily the best-executed version of the premise you’re likely to see anytime soon.

The brisk plot moves episodically through a sequence of seven stories (perhaps Morris Panych-inspired?) of Small’s past employment. There’s a kinetic energy that characterizes so much of the script, best embodied by its onomatopoeic recurrence of “swishes” and “whooshes.” Small shows off her wit in every reported conversation and memory, revealing herself to be a natural-born writer even when she’s not always employed as one. Aspiring actors could excerpt any two-minute segment for the script if they want something meaty to use for their next audition; my personal favourite was a brilliant aside in which Small pontificates on the philosophy of museum curation.

Though the text’s socioeconomic vision might not be as radical as the nearby copy of The Communist Manifesto might suggest — one of many books cited as influences and presented to the audience for perusal while waiting for the show to begin — it has enough to say about the precarity of simply existing as a woman in the world/workplace to make the influences of How I Learned to Drive, A Doll’s House, Fleabag and A Room of One’s Own abundantly clear. The show’s main emphasis isn’t merely that all these jobs suck. Instead, it’s laser-focused on the often-violent occupational hazards that stem from needing to perform troublingly gendered labour. Small recounts the constant struggle of discerning which non-job description expectations are being placed in each new setting, navigating how to emerge out the other side with as little scathing as possible.

Adding a new line to her résumé, this is Small’s first time being an actor in any professional mainstage production. She rises to the occasion impressively during a season that’s arguably oversaturated with playwrights performing in their own pieces. The version of herself she’s playing is a bundle of neuroses who’s constantly at risk of harming herself in beguilingly innovative ways anytime she can’t find a better task to occupy her time and thoughts. There’s a glaze of timidness that dissolves at an almost imperceptibly gradual rate as our heroine becomes increasingly world-wise over her ascent into adulthood.

This is the kind of play that could have easily felt at home in a black box theatre or even a comedy club’s open mic, as may have been the case if it had been produced by a company less invested in site-specificity than OtM. The company’s decision to place it in an actual coffee shop is a thought-provoking one, especially since only one of the play’s seven chapters is actually set in such an establishment. However, remaining encased within the trappings of her first minimum-wage job subtly drives home a key point: No job is free from exploitation, even the ones that she finds creatively fulfilling. Moving upward into supposedly greener pastures isn’t an escape from the tyrannical manager or creepily overtipping repeat customer; these archetypes find ways of reappearing under new guises.

Director Mitchell Cushman has Small weave in and out of practically every morsel of unused space in the already cramped shop. It’s difficult to discern how much of the set has been deliberately designed, given how the café essentially portrays itself and remains operational as such until 15 minutes before the performance begins. Production designer Anahita Dehbonehie and sound designer Heidi Chan possess a remarkable degree of control over the unconventional venue, from integrating light-up bell jars that serve as a visual table of contents to one audio effect involving a yellow highlighter that I can only describe as a magic trick — I’m genuinely unsure and amazed at how Chan pulled it off.

Clearly, Small and OtM’s reputations were enough to generate buzz about this show, as the run had already sold out, been extended and then sold out again even before it officially opened (fortunately, there’s still a nightly waitlist). Unlike the dream jobs that ultimately prove to be no better than serving coffee, Performance Review actually does live up to the hype.