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Review: Dear Annie, I Hate You (Riverside Studios)

Review by Sam Waite

 

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

 

When the content is autobiographical, it goes without saying that some shows intend to showcase the goings on inside an artist’s head. Towards the end of my evening at Riverside Studios, I would find that Samantha Ipema did not take this idea lightly, as her play Dear Annie, I Hate You became briefly documentarian. That is, when Ipema hit play on the footage of an actual surgery, to deal with an actual aneurysm, on an actual brain. Actually.

 


Decidedly blunt and as difficult to watch as it was to look away from, this graphic moment fit perfectly with Dear Annie, a blistering and full-throttle one-and-a-bit woman show. From childhood and the adoption of her brother, to high school and the changes made to fit in, to finally finding her calling as a soccer player, Sam takes us through the ups and downs of life before the diagnosis that changed everything. When a knock to the head sends her to the hospital, they notice something more concerning on her scans, and the decision of whether or not it's safest and wisest to remove “Annie” becomes all-consuming.

 

To personify the aneurysm as Annie is a risky choice – in the visage of co-star Eleanor House, Annie is brash, abrasive, much more the comedic part of the duo. It's difficult to reconcile this larger-than-life presence with something quietly threatening Sam’s very existence, which is precisely what makes it so brilliant. Ipena’s script presents a more traditional one-woman narrative, until Annie decides that Sam is too dull to carry the hour and change by herself, doing to the performance what she has done her life – completely overshadowing it. With live video-feeds and pre-recorded memories included, it's clear that the auditorium is a stand-in for Sam’s brain, bringing greater poignancy to just how chaotic Annie’s initial appearance is.

 


House’s performance is relentless in its enthusiasm, confirming Annie as someone not just desiring but demanding attention. Mostly there to interrupt and frustrate, there is just the right amount of cruelty to House’s portrayal, that little touch that lets the audience know she's there to ruin everything, and that she is not to be adored or welcomed. Moving seamlessly from storyteller to comedy straight-woman and back again, Ipema is graceful in her work and delightfully physical in represented a wild youth of parties and athletics. In heavier moments, she is also able to transition the boisterousness of her youth into genuine and palpable terror, and the racking depression brought on by her situation.

 

The surgical footage – before which audience members are given ample choice to briefly vacate the space – comes as part of the constant video feeds designed by Douglas Coughlan and Dan Light. The pair help us move through Sam’s memories via pre-recorded footage where family and friends (primarily the actors in an array of wigs, though the family do make their own appearances) encourage, discourage, or simply state the obvious. Combined with the uncomfortably enlarged live footage of Ipema in certain moments, the whole thing makes for a comical but chilling combination.

 


Likewise, sound design from Dan Balfour puts us squarely within these memories – when Sam tells us the meds for her operation wore off sooner than expected, how vividly we can hear the procedural footage. As you'd expect, Annie is more drastically amplified than Sam in places, reminding us that she is the star of this show (if you're asking Annie, that is!) Hugo Dodsworth’s lighting has a similarly unnerving energy, but his greatest contribution is the set design. Old TVs are mounted on platforms across the stage, ready to display memories and hidden thoughts, with one empty in the centre for Sam to take. When the plastic curtains pull aside to reveal the full scope of Dodsworth’s work, the effect is breathtaking.

 

Acting as both director and dramaturg, James Meteyard has the unenviable task of keeping all of these plates spinning – keeping all of this entirely necessary information coming in a constant barrage without it feeling like too much, or like we aren't able to digest what has already happened. Meteyard’s collaboration with Ipema is successful because neither seems to want to be the star themselves, and both are clearly working to have the material and the ideas be what we come away praising. Her performance is mesmerising, his direction sharp and controlled, but in a sick way Annie – the threat she poses, rather than her humanised presence – really is the star of the evening.



Intense, powerful, and genuinely educational, Dear Annie, I Hate You tries to be a lot of things, and almost universally it succeeds.with enough dark humour to not completely decimate the crowd, but the correct amount of weight to not undersell such difficult experiences, this is a singular, truly unique theatrical experience which no one is likely to forget any time soon.

 

Dear Annie, I Hate You plays at Riverside Studios until June 1st


 

Photos by Charlie Flint

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