Fringe review: Downstairs
South Australian theatre maker Isobel Pitt gives a tender and touching glimpse into a woman’s experience of a panic attack, and the anxiety that compounds with the anticipation of one. ★★★★
Experiencing anxiety in real life is rarely like how it is in the movies. As South Australian artist and theatre maker Isobel Pitt shares, anxiety and panic attacks are often painful and debilitating, and cannot always be solved by breathing into a paper bag.
The tightly scripted 40-minute production, written and performed by Pitt, is mostly set a birthday party in a restaurant — an anxiety inducing setting for many. There are cardboard cut-outs of two tables surrounded by a couple of chairs each, whiel a real chair sits centre stage with a party hat and party horn resting on it. It’s from this chair, dressed in a red party dress, that Pitt tells her story.
Pitt, who is now based in Melbourne, moves back and forth between the party and other anecdotes from her life that can all be traced back to her experience of anxiety. Anxiety itself is creatively explored with an old-school projector and white sheets: phrases that might run through someone’s head in the lead up to or during a panic attack, such as “what if you vomit?”, “you’re acting weird” or “you should just leave”, are placed onto the projector, and shone onto the sheets in the shape of a spiral.
Pitt constructs this projection on stage, but from behind the sheets where she cannot be seen by the audience; in giving language and shape to her thoughts via the projection, it allows the audience another way to connect and understand her experience, and separates the performer herself, from her anxiety.
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Additionally, tropes from reality TV survival shows or quiz nights – cultural touchstones the audience understands well – are used to help narrate Downstairs. These bring humour to the piece, and tonal variation to the one-woman show.
The stories and anecdotes Pitt shares feel deeply personal and are handled with care; this, in turn, makes the audience itself want to handle Pitt with care, too. Her performance is subtle, frank, and charming, has light and shade, and gives the sense that we are meeting an authentic version of the person to which these stories belong.
The strength in Downstairs lies in how intimate it feels. It is individualised enough that audiences connect to the character on stage and can have empathy and sympathy for her, but broad enough in its themes that it allows audience to see their own mental-health experience, or that of someone close to them, throughout the production.
Downstairs continues at Goodwood Theatre until March 16
Read more 2025 Adelaide Fringe coverage here on InReview