What a revelation is “Enormity, Girl and the Earthquake in her Lungs,” Chelsea Woolley’s poetic, heartfelt stunner of a play now running in a production by the feminist company Nightwood Theatre.
Think Emma Donoghue’s “Room” meets the Pixar film “Inside Out,” meets the Tony Award-winning musical “A Strange Loop.”
Woolley sets her psychological drama inside the mind of her protagonist, who’s fleeing violence and seeking safety at a women’s shelter. As we see the cold, confounding world through her eyes, time slows. Our senses are at once heightened and dulled.
“Enormity” runs for a breathless 90 minutes, without an intermission. But in the world of the woman’s mind, only 10 minutes elapse.
We first meet Woolley’s central character (Vivien Endicott-Douglas, doing some impressive work) as she’s deposited into her new room at the shelter. She’s told to make her bed, get changed and go back outside so one of the staff can help her complete an intake form. But the young woman is left frozen. How did she get here? What happened to her? What even is her name? She doesn’t know.
Her memory is faulty, eroded after years of abuse. All she does know is that she fled to the shelter after a violent episode. But she’s torn. Should she return home, a place that is familiar, but where she will endure further abuse? Or should she remain here? Completing that intake form might very well lead to jail time for her abusers, whom she still loves.
The woman’s thoughts — at once vexing and soothing, cruel yet comforting — are manifested in “Enormity” as a quintet of characters (played by Liz Der, Philippa Domville, Bria McLaughlin, Sofía Rodríguez and Emerjade Simms), who prod, pester and push their host this way and that. And slowly, like a puzzle, they piece together the story of the woman’s life.
This narrative device, of depicting a protagonist’s inner thoughts as distinct characters, is nothing new. We’ve previously seen it used in productions like “Inside Out” and “A Strange Loop.” But I’ve never seen it employed as effectively as in “Enormity.”
Woolley’s writing is lush and poetic, more akin to spoken-word poetry than a traditional theatre script. Her dialogue twists and turns off the actors’ tongues, packed with alliteration, rhythm and rhyme. Even though Woolley’s story is purposefully fractured (we are, after all, in the mind of an unreliable narrator), there always remains a sense of propulsion to the proceedings.
Director Andrea Donaldson’s production, the first show at Nightwood’s new venue, the Nancy & Ed Jackman Performance Centre, lands with equal force and features one of the strongest, most cohesive ensembles on a Toronto stage this year. (This includes a small yet crucial turn by the young actor Noa Simone Furlong, alternating in the role with Marta Armstrong.)
