‘Here are twelve stories about what’s to come in your adult years’, says Haley McGee at the top of Age Is a Feeling, and for some reason, I instantly trust her.
The stage is set with a tall lifeguard chair, with lit candles on a small platform underneath the seat. The chair sits in the centre of a circle marked by 12 pole-like potted flowering plants. Each plant bears a small card with a word written on it in large letters. The audience hears 6 stories, each picked by an audience member, and we are left with just a hint of what might’ve happened in the ones we don’t pick.
Haley McGee, barefoot and dressed in a black blouse featuring some lace and jeans soiled by dirt, picks some cards off the plants and walks towards members of the audience seated closest to the stage. She then asks them to choose from them and read the word written on them out loud. My show picked ‘Oyster’ and ‘Hospital’, which meant we wouldn’t get to listen to ‘Fist’, and ‘Bus’. McGee sits on top of the Lifeguard chair, first aged 25, then 33, then 44, then 52, and at one point I question, how old is Haley McGee? She plays every age with such convincing maturity, narrating changes one undergoes with a ding made by hitting her pencil against her water glass. Had it not been for her appearance, I would have believed that she was a woman in her 90s recounting her life with humour, compassion, and honesty. We experience with her friendship, loneliness, love, loss, and most importantly how these change as one ages.
With the help of Adam Brace’s direction and dramaturgy, the show comments on how we cannot fully know someone’s life. Each story is chosen by the audience revealing that even if one saw the show a dozen times, they would get a different version of McGee’s life. The message however would remain similar, that age is a feeling you have, that each age leaves something new to experience- to look forward to and to be afraid of, and that throughout life ‘you will resolve to drink more water, eat more vegetables and exercise more… And you will… for a while’.
McGee delivers a gripping performance, with minimal gestures and movement on stage. Her rhythmic and precise performance captivates the audience – making us smile, laugh and tear up as she walks us through her life, from her 25th birthday to the day she dies. The script is written with such nuance that McGee sometimes makes you feel joy and then sorrow before your smile has time to melt away, and other times pauses to prolong the moment before the end of a joke or describes in great detail the events before a tragedy that you can see unfolding. Audience members are left breathing deeply after emotional moments, trying to compose themselves, or other times chuckling at moments that they find particularly relatable.
At the end of the show Haley McGee takes the remaining cards, the one’s the audience doesn’t get to hear, and pours dirt over them. The rest however, live on with us, at least until we remember them.
Playing until 11th March, https://sohotheatre.com/shows/age-is-a-feeling/
Reviewer: Anisha Anantpurkar
Reviewed: 21st February 2023
North West End UK Rating: ★★★★★