Lee C.

Wow. Utterly brilliant. Expertly written, exquisitely performed. It’s not often I feel lost for words, but here we are. It was only on my way home when I had time to slow down and think that I finally got the true message of this show underneath its humour and beautiful absurdity: we’re ALL out here alone with each other, we’re ALL being tricked and thrown to the wolves, and each other is ALL we have. Let’s not turn on each other.

This show won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but it sure was mine. 28 stars.

I can relate to several of Tanner’s stories quite a bit and I enjoyed this performance. They present their adventures as a series of diary entries, which keeps things sequential but can feel a little disjointed when stories overlap each other. But hey, real life is messy and disjointed. I felt like Tanner did a good job of putting inflection into their delivery and addressing the audience—they definitely didn’t seem to be merely reading off the pages—but the 100% diary entry format felt a bit stale by the end and I wished they’d sprinkled in something else to break the monotony of that. There were several times throughout where I really wanted to hear more about some aspect of their experiences, but this is theatre and not a two-way conversation, of course. Even so, this was still easily worth my time and I appreciate the openness and vulnerability inherent to these kinds of stories.

This is a personal story of deciding to do A Thing and then actually doing it just because that’s what she decided to do—very relatable to me! While I’d have liked to hear a bit more detail about what led Josina to commit to daily swims in particular, her show is a delight with lots of funny quips to keep audiences engaged. I also appreciated her use of printed “scene title cards” (for lack of a better term) to help spectators stay grounded in each topic, I found them quite helpful for neurodivergent reasons. As I approach my 50s, I’m starting to better understand the experiences of people who make big later-in-life changes, and Josina’s story is inspiring in that way even if cold-water swimming isn’t likely to be my own choice. But if she can do it, surely I could too, right? Bottom line: I’m very glad I attended!