Sunmerhall’s anatomy lecture theatre is the perfect venue for a show about knowing you’re about to die (or maybe not).
In Harriet Madeley’s touching and personal show, she plays journalist Olive, a shallower, more narcissistic version of herself. Olive normally writes fluff about reality TV but dreams of the Pulitzer Prize—her route to professional glory is a pitch about people’s experiences of dying. But Olive then gets a terrifying diagnosis and becomes the story.
This is an impressive physical performance, as Madeley hurls herself around the stage, constantly on a treadmill or interacting manically with an exercise ball. She lurches from appointment to appointment and tries and fails to manage her relationship with her war reporter fiancée, her parents, therapists and armies of men in white coats.
There’s a poignant progression in that relationship, her partner initially trying too hard to help and finally growing tired of Olive’s acting out.
Some of the characters are a little broad and it’s a bit sentimental, but the physicality and energy and verve of the performance impresses, as does the moral conundrum of how to behave when time seems to be running out.