Kelli Ogmundson delivers a perfect performance in this production. How often do I get to say that? Never? Every actor in town should see this piece of work. And so should everybody else who cares about theatre.
In playwright Phoebe Eclair-Powell’s 70-minute monologue, Harm, Ogmundson plays a 39-year-old real estate agent who’s identified in the script only as Woman.
No one in Woman’s WhatsApp group responds to her posts. (“Whatever,” she says. “They’re all busy. We all lead busy lives.”) Sometimes, she takes pills so she can sleep through her weekends. And she once gave her boss Barry “a hand job at a Christmas party because well… it was Christmas.”
When Woman meets a social-media influencer named Alice, who’s a client, she is smitten — in complicated ways: “She’s beautiful in a natural, very natural, oh-so-engineered-to-be-natural way and she glows like her name might be Honeysuckle or Tuppence… And I want her immediately. To suffer something unfortunate. To be friends with me/ Both/ I don’t know.”
Woman ingratiates herself with Alice and, as apparent revenge for her own loneliness, starts to take Alice down on social media, where she discovers godlike power: “It turns out that people really, really love to hate other people.”
The astonishing thing about Ogmundson’s performance is that she inhabits every word, every nuance, every bit of comic potential — without ever overworking it — and that is a kind of miracle. With flawless British accents all round, Ogmundson does hilarious impersonations of other characters — the child-like Alice, her own boring-as-a-dishrag stepmother Cassie — and she does all this while maintaining clear-eyed empathy for the frankly dangerous Woman. As Woman slips into a horrifying rabbit hole and Alice becomes ever more vulnerable, Ogmundson follows her: there is no daylight between the actor and the character.
Structurally, I think the script might be a bit stronger if it were less unidirectional, if Woman tried to curb her impulses sometimes. But I’m so grateful for this theatrical experience that this isn’t a big deal for me.
The basically realistic — and, in one cool moment, surprising — set is by David Roberts. Chengyan Boon provided the moodily responsive and evocative lighting. Jennifer Copping directed this production so she deserves our thanks for pulling it all together.
Harm is dark but fundamentally compassionate. And this production is so good that I left the theatre feeling revitalized.
HARM by Phoebe Eclair-Powell. Directed by Jennifer Copping. Produced by Mitch and Murray Productions. Running at Studio 16 until March 29. Tickets and information. (As I write this, there’s good availability for both the matinée and evening performances on Saturday, March 28.)
PHOTO CREDIT: (Photo of Kelli Ogmundson by Shimon Photo)
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