MICF 2016 - Felicity Ward - “What If There Is No Toilet”

Sunday 17th April 2016 - 7:30 pm

Felicity Ward’s show is about mental illness and irritable bowel syndrome. Two things which some might squirm at being mocked, though Felicity reassures the audience that it’s okay to laugh at it. They’re true, taken from her life. It’s something I like, true or at least sourced from the truth, comedy.

I was seated in the front row, a mistake that I would later find was something of a mistake, though fortunately at the end of the front row.

There were a lot of concepts and information in this show that I’m sure people with a mental illness would immediately identify with. I was familiar with many of them, mostly due to family and friends talking about things like that, and from donkey’s years ago when I studied psychology in high school. I could understand a lot of the things Felicity talks about, personally I’ve never felt the levels of anxiety she describes in her show, but she makes it very real.

There’s some great production / direction from her crew, with changes in lighting when she goes ‘inside’ Beryl, and with her facial expressions it really sells Beryl as a unique complicated and terrible personality lurking within Felicity.

Around 3/4 of the way through the show I was looking at my watch, because I was thinking of going to Tommy Dassalo’s show, which was at 195 Swanston Street in the Downstairs Lounge of the The Grand Mercure Hotel. I’d walked from there down to the ACMI Cube where Felicity’s show was to test how long it took, 10 minutes, it’d take maybe a little longer up hill. So I was hoping the show would finish on time.

As the end of the show came Felicity talks about how she’s spiritual, though not religious. This leads into her hanging up a board of religious lyrics. I want to say the song was called ‘Father Brown’, but I know it isn’t because that’s a TV show. But it’s close enough, she then explains she / we’re going to have a sing along, so she hangs up some lyrics and gets everyone to stand up.
At this point I think that she’s just going to just sing and dance to the audience.
She says something like ‘I promise it’s not religious’.
Then she starts to shout, encouraging everyone to sing with her, punching your hands into the air.
Now, at this point I wasn’t the only one not singing and waving my hands around (probably), I was definitely not the only person in the front row now doing it. One other guy wasn’t doing it, but was shouted at by Felicity.
I thought ‘no, I’m going to hold steadfast, she’s not...oh wait’, so, I did not have my arms crossed, I had my thumbs hooked into the pockets of my jeans. Not singing and not waving my arms around either.
Felicity said something along the lines of ‘come on...’ I did not want to disrupt her final show of the comedy festival, nor did I want to disrupt the rest of the audience’s fun by doing anything that would disrupt things, so I just gave her a slow shake of the head, hoping that would be the end of it.
Nope.
She was still on stage, but she was able to get quite close, me being tall and her bending down she was face to face with me. Enough that all I recall at this point was her face and hat framed in my vision.
I decided I’d had enough, I wasn’t going to be bullied into doing anything, especially as I’d paid to be there and I wanted to leave to get to Tommy Dassalo’s show. So I gave her a small wave and I think even a smile and walked out of the show.
I recall some people making ‘aww, no’ some noises, but kept my gaze on the wall and ahead to the door and walked out.