How can you possibly convey a near-death experience, having your heart ripped from your chest, to those who have never undergone such an event?
According to circus performer Marianna Joslin, who was born with the congenital heart condition called Tetralogy of Fallot, it is a little like 'American Horror Story' and a little like a Baz Luhrmann film; part nightmare, part the best and worst acid trip that you’ve ever had.
Marianna, flanked by four acrobats in surgical garb, commenced the show by frankly recounting her story with quite quotidian expository phrasing; the initial response was “oh my, this is going to be bleak”. The mood was then immediately lifted, though, with spectacular and vibrant acrobatics. It was a show that was deliberately disjointed, like a dream state, with seemingly discordant fragments representing the tumult of Marianna’s psyche. Scientists are only now beginning to comprehend the interrelationship between the heart and the brain; when Marianna’s valves where sliced and re-arranged, so too was her mind. The show effectively conveyed this fact.
There were moments of poetic poignancy when Marianna related the trauma of her childhood: how she overcame nightmares by creating a second self; how she longed to play with her two older brothers but just couldn’t keep up. These memories are the soundtrack to joyous, amusing and accomplished circus feats. Casey Douglas and Jake Silvestro, representing Marianna’s older brothers, were like Tweedledee and Tweedledum merged with a pair of shaven grizzly bears; big bruising bounders with comedic flair. Jake also composed the rhythmical and arrhythmical score. Marianna’s two selves were represented by a duo of aerialists; one with a girl-next-door’s ginger pony tail, the other with a bride of Frankenstein frizz.
Other moments were comically absurd or just plain absurd, but undoubtedly representations of an indescribable journey into the unknown. The work was strongest, though, when Marianna was at her most lyrical and when words accompanied actions. This was ultimately a daring, confronting and entertaining work that is definitively 'fringe'.
★★★★☆
