May 153 min read

World Problems - Southbank Theatre (VIC)

Written by Emma Mary Hall. Directed by Cassandra Fumi. Presented by Melbourne Theatre Company.

World Problems gives voice to how everything that has ever happened or is yet to occur will one day become subject to nostalgia, at least in the arena of traditional storytelling.

Review by Caitlin A. Kearney

Southbank Theatre (Melbourne)

3rd - 22nd May

Tickets: https://www.mtc.com.au/plays-and-tickets/whats-on/season-2024/world-problems/

As I remember, the stage frames a striking set at once recognisable as Capital D Dystopian. From the gaping mouth of a cornucopia that appears to be a rotting communication dish crawls Carly Sheppard. “I remember,” she begins, and, from early childhood to a future playing out beyond our current experience, that is how she begins every new sentence for the duration of the hour.

World Problems is a new one-woman theatre piece that gives voice to how everything that has ever happened or is yet to occur will one day become subject to nostalgia or the fallible lens of past personal impression- at least in the arena of traditional storytelling.

World Problems, Melbourne Theatre Company (2024). Images by Tiffany Garvie

It reminds us that what gets to live on in human memory- in part or in larger part- often ends up being somewhat arbitrary, and that the intimate and the global both seem as close, as detailed, and as imperatively important to the individual’s experience of the world regardless of anything. What’s more, the writing deals with this mammoth subject with both humour and reverence, and the performance is enhanced with transfixing physicality.

Despite the darkness of much of the matter, the manner of this work has an enduring lightness to it that welcomes the audience in to inevitably reminisce- if not about our own lived experiences of described events then about times when we have felt an adjacent way in our relationship with the world around us and how we may have carried those encounters with us since, allowing their echoes to continually shape us.

I’ll admit that whilst watching I went on a journey with my feelings about the structure of the piece. Sheppard herself has magnetic presence and believability as a performer, but after ten minutes one begins to wonder if the monologue will ever evolve out of “I remember” and into the realm of something resembling a narrative. When it sets in that this isn't going to happen, there is a sense of anticipation for how placing those structures on the storytelling will enrich it.

World Problems is an exercise in hope...survival as a community and healing through connectedness and sharing

As Sheppard carries us steadily from disjointed but genuinely relatable recollections of being a young person in the 80s, 90s, and 00s, on to the unfamiliar territory of a theoretical future, the conceit does prove effective. There is a particular haunting quality to statements like “I remember when we all stopped wearing polyester” and “I remember the death of George Clooney” being mixed in with accounts of fiery global tragedy, but that is the reality of how an overwhelming and unstoppable onslaught of information is digested in the minor gaps one has available for public concerns around the private.

It is easy to forget that the pandemic would, as recently as 2019, have only really been thought of as a credible threat by routine wearers of tin foil hats. Now, five years later, whenever a surprise appears in the news it is just as quickly absorbed into the landscape of accepted fact. The figure portrayed by Sheppard has already undergone this process many times over, so we get to go along with her distanced narration of her train of thought as she reflects on years of consequence resulting from Capitalism and Climate Change, jumbled up with memories of what begins to seem like it cannot possibly be only one character’s private life. We graduate to the impression that the figure is communicating a bottomless catalogue of imperfect fragments spanning decades and more than one individual’s experiences.

Ultimately it is revealed that World Problems is an exercise in hope; in entertaining the idea that whilst the absolute worst imaginable is conceivably possible for humanity, so is survival as a community and healing through connectedness and sharing. The real apocalypse will not necessarily be the end, it may be something of an ordeal with life to be lived on the other side of it.

World Problems is playing at The Lawler in the Southbank Theatre until 22nd May 2024.

CAST & CREATIVES

CARLY SHEPPARD Performer

EMMA MARY HALL

Writer

CASSANDRA FUMI

Director

DANN BARBER

Set & Costume Designer

HARRIE HOGAN

Lighting Designer

RACHEL LEWINDON