Fringe review: Dear Diary
A diary from a younger self is explored and reinterpreted in storytelling and song. It is a vivid portrait of the artist as a young woman. ★★★★
“My name is Kay and I want to tell you a story,” singer Kay Proudlove tells the audience. And it is a beguiling, pensive and candid one. Dear Diary is a history — or rather, a herstory — based on a relic from the turn of the century: her diary as a 13-year-old.
Kay gets a phone call from her father with an important announcement. She has to clear out her bedroom in the family home in Wollongong —because her mother wants to use it as a sewing room. This means going through the books and clothes and precious stuff that make up her early life, the mementos that are both pleasing and disconcerting. Happy recollections and unwelcome reminders.
Most notable is her diary, charting the highs and lows, a chronicle of her emerging self. It lists her ambitions: “I want to be a model. Or a vet.”
She wants eight cats, six-pack abs and to smoke Winfield Blues.
There is also her Book of Guys. She has a crush on Jacob and keeps his discarded ice cream spoon like a holy relic. Her commentary is sharp and quotable: “He left a trail of broken hearts — and Lynx Africa”
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There are reminders of celebrity crushes and drafts of letters unsent. She discovers The Lord of the Rings movies and softly croons with her guitar “No-one can love you like I could — Elijah Wood. “
The Spice Girls also feature, as Kay and her friend form a Spice Girls tribute duo called Gorgeous. She has screenshots of hand-written lyrics and costume designs. Kay wants to be Baby Spice. Not Ginger Spice — the one who left the band because of “artistic differences”, and apparently because she was exhausted from endless crash dieting.
Dear Diary can be fond and endearing but also disturbed and emotionally revealing. The social and sexual pressures in late high school, binge drinking and treacherous mean girl peer exclusion — these are examined with regret and some dismay. Proudlove’s story also moves closer to her present life as an indie musician and songwriter — and the precarious situation for artists following their teenage dreams and ambitions.
She also talks about the tyrannies of self-image. Never mawkishly or self-pitying but with sorrowful recognition at how much these things weigh us down and waste our time. Dear Diary is deftly managed, winningly presented, and will strike a tuneful chord with many audiences. Especially those who remember those Spice Girls — Baby and Ginger.
Dear Diary, presented by the Merrigong Theatre Company, is playing in The Studio, Holden Street Theatres from February 18 to March 9.