Theatre review: Age is a Feeling

Fresh from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival where it achieved critical acclaim, Age is a Feeling by 36-year-old Canadian Haley McGee is now playing at the Soho Theatre in London.

Starting at 25 – the age at which the brain is supposedly fully developed – McGee explores the sweep of an adult life. In the middle of the stage there’s a wooden stepladder which she ascends to make commentary, an umpire and commentator rolled into one. Her jeans are filthy, her feet bare and smudged with dirt – a nod her vulnerability as delves into the messiness of life, perhaps?

To determine which moments she’ll relay, audience members are invited to choose from 12 postcards pinned up on artificial flower stems set in pots around the stage. Over the course of the evening, we hear about ‘oyster’, ‘book’ and ‘eggs’. But other postcards like ‘teeth’, ‘bus’ and ‘crabapple’ she lets fall to the ground. As she explains, “No one knows everything about your life, not even you.”

In the course of the telling she conjures a cast of off-stage characters - a mother, a father, an older brother, an unstable best friend, boyfriends. It’s the small details, such as the refrain of a song sung by her mother in childhood or her revulsion at her boyfriend’s stained teeth, that bring these figures to life. This is a rounded picture of a life and the emotion is raw – on more than one occasion she cries real tears.

It feels like a very personal journey, covering heartache, childlessness, illness and loss. You sense she’s drawing deeply on experiences from her past and exploring her own fears for the future, albeit at the remove of an imagined persona addressed throughout as ‘you’.

It could all get a bit heavy, but there’s a wit and a warmth, too. The resolution to drink more water, eat more vegetables and stay in shape is one many of us can identify with… especially the part where we don’t actually manage to keep it up.

As the years rattle by 28, 33, 40, 63… she tells us repeatedly ‘age is a feeling’. What does this mean? In the snapshots we see, certain ages do seem likely to give rise to certain feelings, especially in the face of failure to conform to societal norms. In ‘eggs’, for example, we’re given an unflinching portrait of the pain of being 43 and at the end of five failed cycles of IVF.

On the positive side, growing older, it seems, can bring feelings of greater security. Armed with experience, in your sixties the recurring nightmare that plagued your younger self is now a nonsense you can laugh about.

But while the links between age and feelings are explored, the performance resists absolutes. Moments of profound joy and profound pain can attend us at any time, regardless of our physical age. Lives deviate. There is no set pattern.

It’s a convincing portrayal of a life delivered in a compelling format. In a culture that so often shies away the realities of growing older, McGee’s willingness to engage with this theme feels important, and long overdue. It’s performance that invites honest self-reflection in its audience – unsettling, perhaps, but in many ways affirming and constructive.

From a Christian point of view, the claim that no-one knows everything about you doesn’t quite ring true. For there is someone who knows everything about you. Every last detail, in fact...

As a side note, I saw this play shortly after the death of the Queen was officially announced. At home afterwards I, like numerous others, found myself watching footage from her life play out across the television screen. It’s comforting to think that while we may see these snapshots of her life, God sees the whole and He has now called her safely home, as He will all who trust in Him.

The September run of Age Is a Feeling is now sold out, but it will back at the Soho Theatre in 14th February to 11th March 2023.

See here for further details and tickets.