How many details do you remember from your childhood? What about your adolescence? In Emma Mary Hall’s World Problems, Carly Sheppard plays a woman who seemingly remembers almost everything. Sheppard crawls forth from a large funnelled tube reminiscent of a black hole and begins to recount details of a childhood spent in suburban Adelaide, switching between the mundane and monumental. The vast majority of the sentences that make up what turns out to be an hour-long monologue begin with “I remember…”, with the exception of rare moments where she points out the gaps in her memory.
Landmark historical events like September 11 and the fall of the Berlin Wall intertwine with day-to-day details like moments at school or the best fish and chip shop in the entire world. At first, we can trace the narrative to a specific time period – she remembers dial-up internet and her first Nokia, but not her first smartphone. Gradually though, hints of a dystopian future characterised by social disintegration and ecological disaster emerge. Where does memory stop and speculation begin? It’s difficult to tell.
Dann Barber’s greyed-out set and costumes mirror the warped timeline, as tight sci-fi-style garments are layered over with casual garb that could fit within many parts of the 20th or 21st centuries. An analogue TV and a timeless teddy bear (soon ripped apart to great effect) add to the thought-provoking jumble of it all.
As the production continues, we’re definitely not in Kansas anymore, but rather an unsettling future marked with unimaginably high floods, skulls scanned at passport gates and people marrying their microwaves. Sheppard gives a compelling performance, alternatively impassive and impassioned, as she literally wears the world on her shoulders, then takes it right off again.
However, the repetitive formula of the book causes the work to sometimes lose its momentum, with few points of action to sustain the hour. A bigger bang to tie things up could perhaps have also delivered a more satisfying conclusion. Nonetheless, World Problems is an intellectually stimulating hour, rich with smart commentary on the future of our planet.
World Problems is playing at Southbank Theatre's the Lawler until May 22 and tickets are available here.
