Ottawa Fringe: 52 Pickup a Beautiful Beacon in 2019 North America
I, personally, don’t talk about my own neuroses and anxieties much. Not often – not in a way compelling enough for the subsequent conversation to be worth having, not loud enough for the “right people” to join in and commiserate and world-build, not often enough to ever be relevant at the right time, when #MeToo trends on Twitter or when the Tumblr-verse beckons for solidarity.
52 Pickup blows apart this conceit, that trauma needs performative layers of wokeness in order to be somehow valid in the eyes of the onlooker. Katie Nixon is a vital presence onstage – a triple threat with a timely and painful message. In one hour we see some standard Fringe fare: storytelling that gives way to artier moments of music and movement. We also see a carefully-calculated, yet never insincere emotional arc unfold as the figure in front of us becomes slowly more resigned to the realities of being a victim in (in her case, American) 2019. Nixon comes across as self-assured even in the aftermath of her trauma, even in the presence of the voices who exist both to aid and to combat her recovery, even in moments of beautiful, visceral freneticism.
Nixon is a gifted performer with an impressive musical theatre belt. She sings several times within the show, often accompanying herself on piano or guitar; some songs (including that which we saw on Preview night) are catchy and funny, while others are more internal and seemingly cathartic. Some musical moments do feel a tad sparse, as if there are more orchestrations in Nixon’s head that we can’t quite hear, but they still work to add a powerful layer to the piece’s storytelling.
Nixon astutely points out issues in modern drama dealing with sexual assault: that they feature a whiny and unsympathetic protagonist, that secondary characters work in tandem with each other to prove the protagonist a liar, and that there is an inevitable and contrived rape scene to punctuate a climax. We as theatregoers know this play well; commercial hits like the musical Spring Awakening constantly fall slave to this narrative form factor. Nixon comments on her world in a way that aches to listen to as a woman, as a survivor, as an artist, as an American; the things she notices are the symptoms of misogyny and mistreatment rather than the big ideas themselves. She gives her abuser a name and a framework, but fills in details and intricacies with anxieties and distractions – tactile totems of having been hurt and working to move forward.
52 Pickup features some audience participation, which, dramaturgically, asks heavy questions of complicity and culpability to Nixon’s narrative. The audience member plucked to the playing space is guided onstage, manipulated into being a part of the show’s history; how do those power dynamics mirror those of uneven romantic relationships? How does consent factor into theatre, and how are we as audience members able to reconcile that we are inactive bystanders to tales of abuse and manipulation? Theatre is singularly powerful in its ability to make its audiences feel the afterglow of pain; proximity magnifies a play’s core, and 52 Pickup exemplifies this beautifully.
52 Pickup is a must-see at Ottawa Fringe 2019. I left this show feeling differently than I had at its beginning; 52 Pickup affirms that victims, art, and the liminal space between them are doubtlessly valid. The questions 52 Pickup asks and the answers it finds along the way do not feel at all clichéd, at all tired or insincere; Katie Nixon is a smouldering, evocative menace of an artist who has an absolute hit on her hands.
52 Pickup runs through June 23. For full scheduling, visit www.ottawafringe.com/schedule. 52 Pickup is in BYOV D, Arts Court Library