OLD-ish
Havana Theatre: September 9, 11, 13 and 14, 2019
Tickets: vancouverfringe.com or at the door
Posted September 9, 2019
I have been reviewing playwright/performer Susan Freedman’s brand of wry humour for seventeen years – longer than many marriages! The first review was Sixty And More Lies About My Weight (the follow-up to her 1999 show Fifty-seven And Still Lying About My Weight). My review was a disaster: I got her surname name wrong – in print, in the Vancouver Courier – before the days of quick-fixes online. She was so decent about it I’ve been following her ever since: Sixty-four and No More Lies (2006), Spilling Family Secrets (2015) and now OLD-ish.
I have been growing old-ish with Susan Freedman for years.
So why does she look so goldarned good all these years later?
Attitude. Oh, sure, she’s well-coiffed and well-dressed but she’s had more than her share of health problems – none of which show but could have kept her down. She’s probably hiding something even now. That’s her thing. Her charming thing.
Oh, she knows she’s going to die; we’re all going to die, says she. In OLD-ish, Freedman takes a good hard look at death from the vantage point of age seventy-seven and wonders what will be her “thing”: heart attack, cancer – what will get her in the end? But rather than wallow in it, she embraces it and, dammit, is going to have fun right up ‘til the end. She refuses to be grim while waiting for the grim reaper. “What am I waiting for?” she asks, contemplating a river cruise and an endless array of courses at the local rec centre. And she’s back to cooking with butter and cream after banishing them from her kitchen back in 1975.
The show is full of laugh-out-loud moments as we old-ish ones in the audience compare notes with her. Remember back when we were thirty-ish and upon hearing of someone’s death at, say, seventy-six said cavalierly, “Well, that’s a pretty good life.” What? At seventy-six? That’s just a spring chicken. Freedman says she now demands to know the cause of death when someone drops dead at ninety-five.
So it’s all about attitude. Eat well and exercise every day if you can, but attitude beats everything, according to Freedman. It may not keep you alive longer but you will definitely have more fun in the time you have left.
Easier said than done but Freedman says it with such confidence and good humour, I figure she’s right. And anyway, what do we have to lose?