Review: ENORMITY, GIRL, AND THE EARTHQUAKE IN HER LUNGS at Nightwood Theatre

Technically, the events of ENORMITY, GIRL, AND THE EARTHQUAKE IN HER LUNGS take place over the course of approximately ten minutes. Practically, they take place over the tensely-staged 90 minutes of Nightwood’s inaugural production on its new permanent stage at 877 Yonge St., produced in association with Tarragon Theatre. Psychologically, Chelsea Woolley’s exploration of the mental state of Vic (Vivian Endicott-Douglas), the young woman who has checked herself into a women’s shelter, takes place over a lifetime of abuse. 

Vic’s shelter (designed by Ting-Huan 挺歡 Christine Urquhart) is sparse; there’s a low bed, a bag of sheets to make it and scrubs for her to wear. The room’s sides slant perceptibly toward the back of the stage, drawing our attention to her only way out, an ominous door where a voice promises help and care and light (designer Raha Javanfar) peeks through the cracks – if only Vic can compose herself enough to come out. 

What should be a simple task is complicated by the years of psychological baggage that put Vic in the room in the first place; her inner voices, personified by a group of six women mostly wearing shades of purple (costume design by Amanda Wong), are her constant companions. Each with a distinct agenda, the voices alternately bolster her resolve, prey on her insecurities, and reenact traumatic events from her past.

Representing the personalities that traumatized people often develop as coping mechanisms, they’re just one of the numerous internal and systemic barriers preventing her from opening that door.

Woolley’s moving and layered script, developed over years in Nightwood’s Write From the Hip program, is like a firehose of neuroses, a constant barrage that drenches you with a mind that never shuts off and lungs that never take a breath. The term that comes to mind is a variation on choreopoem, coined by Ntozake Shange in 1975 to describe her seminal work For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf. While Woolley’s work uses a more deliberately Western storytelling form than Shange’s, her characters similarly play around with rhythm while representing emotions and aspects of self.

Director Andrea Donaldson and movement director Lisa Karen Cox skillfully weave together the constantly moving parts of Vic’s background, telling a fragmented story of familial abuse that’s only compounded by the betrayal of others in positions of power. This abuse, and its impact on Vic, is subtle until it’s not. No shrinking phantoms, Vic’s inner voices manipulate, manhandle, and push her around, not content until she’s as unmade as the bed waiting for her to decide to take the next step forward to help herself. Liz Der, Philippa Domville, Bria McLaughlin, Sofía Rodríguez, and Emerjade Simms don’t miss a beat, flowing like waves over the space. Domville exudes a mature, calming presence that is both maternal and menacing, while McLaughlin brings in a much-needed sense of playfulness (and eventually sports a face full of bright blue glitter makeup).

For all the trauma, there are genuinely funny sections, particularly when Vic becomes self-aware that she’s spiraling and ironically comments from the outside before being sucked back in. These moments of release are essential and realistic, part of the complex human tapestry Woolley’s weaving.

That being said, while the show is technically impressive in its relentlessness, I found myself wishing that sometimes it would come up for air enough for us to fully grasp onto those key moments swirling by in Vic’s turbulent sea of emotions. This is a show that demands intense concentration; without it, you might find it easy to let the whole thing wash over you, wondering what you’ve just seen.

It’s in the moments where we meet Vic’s younger self (on opening night, Noa Simone Furlong; also played by Marta Armstrong) that time really slows down and the stakes become clear – where we can, ironically, let the crashing emotional barrage finally seep in.

Whether it’s ten minutes, an hour and a half, or a lifetime, conquering an enormity begins with a single breath.