Reviewed by: A Thousand Words
The story of Moby Dick is one that most are vaguely familiar with - a white whale, a captain bent on revenge, etcetera, etcetera (or so Casey Jay Andrews reminds us in the informal intro to this show) - but The Wild Unfeeling World certainly provides a fresh interpretation of this old tale.
In The Yurt, furnished with only a blue, painted tarp positioned like an incoming wave, Dylan - a twenty-something struggling through a variety of miseries that have occurred in a depressingly short space of time - is lying on the floor of a multi-storey car park, trying to find the motivation to get up off the floor. She embarks on a strange and ambitious quest: walk across London to reach the Sea Life aquarium, attempting to restore some sense of joy to her life through the power of childhood nostalgia.
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Andrews’ performance drags the audience down into Dylan's anxiety, suffocating in its mundanity, via the detritus of modern life - damp, coffee-stained clothes and a moving box labelled “notebooks, sketchbooks, etc” acting as metaphorical touchstones for her suffering. However, the beauty of The Wild Unfeeling World is its thematic core, as we see that even in the depths of despair, there is always someone willing to reach out a hand. The bittersweet ending may or may not be book-accurate, but I much prefer the joy and hope that Andrews embodies in the final moments of the play, that so evocatively show the power of asking for help when you need it.