Picture: Scornavacca Photography
Driving in Circles continues at McIntosh at Gilded Balloon at Appleton Tower until 24 August 2025.
Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Are you ready to take a long drive with an indefatigably energetic, occasionally manic, but seasoned driver? Prepared to go round and round, get lost, narrowly escape an accident, risk a party in a spooky house, meander, miss appointments, cross borders, share the back seat with strangers, get no sleep, drive after midnight, time-travel, survive panic attacks at the wheel, see the sun rise, stop for a snack, sing?
Acting as their own sat nav, Jay Eddy, a self-described non-gifted but tireless navigator, incorporates extended voice techniques to turn moments on this road trip quite simply crazed. All of the original material that forms this show is written by Eddy. It is shaped in a non-linear fashion, sometimes spoken in first and sometimes third person, drawing on the reverberations of suggested ‘disorders’ of post-traumatic stress and emotionally-unstable personality diagnoses to recall events and feelings in whatever unpredictable order they may manifest.
Kaleidoscopic imagery features heavily in the graphics accompanying songs which pulsate like the throb of an engine. The theatrical framework of Eddy’s autobiographical retracing gives entry into various states of mind and lived experience, which includes disabling fright, all reconstructed to express and not shock.
Eddy is incredibly skilful at engaging listeners and keeping them there even when there are long asides into dreams, meditations and trance-like states. This genre-challenging ‘art-pop’ indie musical theatre show seamlessly combines astoundingly well-enunciated monologue with dynamically-performed original songs, provocative in their content, form and style.
These speak in other tongues and metaphors articulating emotions adjacent to the script. Whereas the monologue is interior and the storytelling restrains and structures the emotional aftermath of trauma, the music has the communicative power to reach out. The songs work intensely and sometimes comically through post-traumatic happenings – an attack of ‘word vomit’, breakdowns, self-harm, even the assumption of alien identity and onset of panic seizures – to ultimately embrace love and the expression of artistic identity.
Driving in circles reflects how, for the creative production team, which includes Sam Plattus as director and Gage Baker as designer, lived experience is not a journey necessarily in a forward direction. Breaks signify progress or at least change; family interventions seem to contribute to a subtext of recovery. The sisterly solidarity is beyond heart-warming, and illuminated by home movies, including sisters dancing joyfully, poignant as recorded in time before trauma.
This brave confessional show – intentionally accessible as ‘relaxed performance’ – does highlight a destination to aim for: hope, and whatever that can mean if worlds are ending. We are told, and shown, this is a love story. As a concluding point of stasis is finally reached, Eddy exits the car’s coffin-like protection, remembering joy, as this is actually a love story! ‘Paralysed by hope’ Eddy leads us in anthem: ‘There will be a new world – we will build it together’ as little sunflowers populate the screen. Ah…
An awesome performance in the fast lane, and not at all about just bad things. Get in and ride where it may lead you.
Charlotte Purkis
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