Rosamund Small in Performance Review.Dahlia Katz/Outside the March
- Title: Performance Review
- Written and performed by: Rosamund Small
- Director: Mitchell Cushman
- Company: Outside the March
- Venue: Morning Parade Coffee Bar
- City: Toronto
- Year: Until March 30, 2025
There exists an albatross in the world of solo theatre, a one-word standard against which all future monologues stand the risk of being compared: Fleabag.
In 2013, Phoebe Waller-Bridge vaulted to indie theatrical stardom with her Edinburgh Fringe hit, which eventually evolved into the Emmy-winning TV series that made Waller-Bridge a fixture at awards shows and in the A-lister tent at Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. The magic of the original Fleabag was in its simplicity – a woman sits on a stool talking for an hour. No hot priests, no celebritized glamour: just damn fine writing in a cool, dark theatre.
Not every new solo show needs to be juxtaposed against Fleabag. But I’d argue that Rosamund Small’s Performance Review, about an unnamed playwright and TV writer who may or may not be Small herself, and who may or may not have complicated memories of the sexual misconduct embedded into Canada’s most prized theatre spaces, does. Outside the March has even gone so far as to cite Waller-Bridge and Fleabag in the promotional materials for this show – a gutsy, and sometimes accurate, marketing ploy.
Performance Review follows Rosamund Small through a series of job interviews, the first being for a Second Cup barista position.Dahlia Katz/Outside the March
Staged in the cozy Morning Parade Coffee Bar just off Dundas Street West, Performance Review follows Small through a series of job interviews, the first being for a Second Cup barista position. (Hence the site-specific café setting, which sees Small navigate the space in sensible non-slip sneakers and a nondescript apron and tights.) Like many entry-level customer service jobs, the stint at Second Cup ends poorly, but paves the way to Small’s more formative work at theatres and TV shows across North America and England.
Each of Small’s workdays concludes with a crisis. A coffee shop closes. A close collaborator assaults her. A speaking engagement at a Toronto theatre goes poorly. A would-be boss assaults her. A thorny Zoom meeting. An assault. A new day job. An assault. Each professional step forward results in a devastating loss of self, be it in the aftermath of a catastrophically awkward dinner party or a quiet, debilitating rape.
There’s a twinkliness to Small’s speaking that makes her feel like a close friend or family member – a bright smile the size of Toronto makes her radiate an almost Disney-ish warmth. “Seeing people is my superpower,” she proclaims more than once, eyes gleaming, grin fixed. She’s right: Her ability to lock eyes with her audience as she twists into herself is astounding, her words mixing in the air with the smell of coffee grounds and sweat.
One could argue that seeing people – and convincing them to trust Outside the March’s increasingly out-there staging conventions – is director Mitchell Cushman’s superpower, too. Cushman knows how to massage monologues into meaty, complete pieces of theatre – by stepping back, and by allowing artists to steer their own stories. (He exercised similar restraint in Haley McGee’s solo Age Is a Feeling, with the same egoless care toward the work at hand.) Cushman’s interventions with Performance Review are minimal and specific, with Heidi Chan’s sound design aiding as much in Small’s storytelling as Small’s own succulent writing.
That said, it’s the writing itself where Performance Review squeaks. Small uses an intriguing motif of intrusive thoughts to punctuate each story – what if she ate a marble right now? What if she smashed a coffee mug against the side of her head? What if, à la Ladybird, she hurled herself out of a moving car? – and each time, those disquieting questions bring comfort, or, if not comfort, numbness. There’s a reliability to the interruptions, a salve to the anxiety of being alive, and having to participate in capitalism, and wondering when the next interpersonal cataclysm might occur.
It’s a neat device that’s used just a few too many times, and at present, it’s a device that interferes with Small’s ability to bring Performance Review to a close. Part of Fleabag‘s brilliance is its ending – Waller-Bridge masterfully saves her heroine from drowning in the abyss of her own misfortune, bringing her up for air in the form of a final, resounding job interview – and that sense of finality is missing in Performance Review. Small concludes by telling us how the show came together, recalling her sacred writing spaces and precious commutes across Toronto; that ending not only registers as incomplete, but as damaging to the often excellent material that precedes it. The tantalizing question mark around our protagonist’s relationship with the real-life Small is, in effect, erased.
Still, Performance Review is exquisitely performed and, ending aside, written in a delicious syntax that oh-so-satisfyingly walks the line between conversation and poetry. Fleabag it is not – not yet, anyway – but this tiny coffee shop near Ossington Avenue, and Cushman’s thoughtful, hands-off direction, complement Small’s poised sense of humour like no traditional theatre ever could.
In the interest of consistency across all critics’ reviews, The Globe has eliminated its star-rating system in film and theatre to align with coverage of music, books, visual arts and dance. Instead, works of excellence will be noted with a critic’s pick designation across all coverage. (Television reviews, typically based on an incomplete season, are exempt.)