Mathew Briggs/Under The Microscope. The Space. 8 Dec 2022
A torch flashes onstage. It reveals the silhouette of a figure clearly crashing this way, then that way, then this way on roller skates.
Lights up! Who is this French accented young women clad in ancient flying goggles, vest, shorts and flying scarf?
Lucky! Better. An Angel! An Angel who has arrived in a world of brown paper clouds high in the sky and brown paper little hills dotted about the stage, with a tale to tell.
Andi Snelling’s solo show Happy-Go-Wrong is the most extraordinary, brilliant midi clown physical theatre act filled with very real, very serious life threatening content.
What does cheeky Lucky mean when she says an accident befalling Andi is a ‘happy’ thing?
The constant flipping to and from upbeat Lucky to Andi - struggling to comprehend and survive a viciously uncaring, politicised medical system, presenting as ‘well’ to the world despite being near death - is frankly as confronting as it is spectacularly funny.
Snelling’s command of her audience from start to finish is absolute. Her cuts from Lucky to herself and back are so arresting, so discombobulating one barely has a chance to settle into the next moment of laughter as a follow up experience of suffering is swiftly upon you.
The journey Lucky and Andi take the audience on towards understanding Andi’s predicament is mediated so powerfully in motion. Every action, every slide, turn, fall, tells us so much and reaches deep within us, to recognise something of ourselves in these tense scenes.
Snelling is wickedly gifted in confronting an audience with the most difficult of subjects in the most endearing, kind, warm and compelling manner. That she has done so through her very real personal experience is testament to the greatness within her and deserving of many a repeat season.
This is the play a very wrong world desperately needs.
David O’Brien
When: 8 to 10 Dec
Where: The Space
Bookings: ticketek.com.au
