The Butterfly Club
1 to 1o June
I made the trip to one of my favourite Melbourne performance venues, The Butterfly Club to see Death Pretzel, performed by Lucy Ross and Chloe Towan. This show’s subject matter contains mental health, suicidal thoughts and death.
*This review contains spoilers*
This is a show revolving around Sam, who is in the transition from death to the afterlife and here she meets Morgan who is a god-like figure (circa the Netflix Series ‘The Good Place’). Morgan talks to Sam and informs that she is dead and assess where she is and how she ended in this bubble. Sam starts by being a little freaked out and not quite believing what’s going on and as the story progresses she realises that she is in fact ‘not quite dead’ but has to wait and see if she will indeed wake up or continue to the next life. It’s later in the story that she in fact has taken pills in an attempt to end her life.
Lucy Ross does a brilliant job portraying Sam and the mental journey she went on to get to this position. Her emotional story was a particular highlight starting off in a somewhat comic mood but then progressing into a more vulnerable state as she speaks to Morgan who is portrayed very convincingly by Chloe Towan. The show is basically a conversation between the two trying to figure out Sam’s feelings and Morgan’s job is to tell her what will happen next. Another highlight I really liked was the inclusion of drawings done by Sam to convey her feelings through pictures, this is a great way of displaying mental health issues if it’s too hard to say in words. Lucy Ross’s performance sparkles as the show goes on and she relives everything that happened to end up where she did and I was very impressed at her physical mental health display. Chloe Towan was often the comic relief when explaining to Ross’s character what was happening but then I also loved how she too connected with Sam’s story and too became vulnerable. The end was particularly poignant when the question came up of whether Sam would wake up or not and the both Sam and Morgan froze on stage when the lights went down.
I highly commend Chloe and Lucy on a very powerful and purposeful performance.
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