In Blizzard, now at the Soho Theatre, writer and director Emily Woof has created a one-woman poignant and at times both physical and philosophical comedy that taps into the midlife neuroses and daydreams we all ponder.
Middle-aged, married and muddled, Dotty (Emily Woof) and her husband, neuroscientist (also nicknamed Dotty) are growing apart as their ways of looking at the world diverge. Woof’s Dotty wants to admire the dappled beauty of the light through the trees while her husband wants to analyse them scientifically. Things grow increasingly spiky and cantankerous between them.
The story really gets going when husband Dotty is too unwell to present his life’s work at a conference in Switzerland so our heroine Dotty goes in his stead.
Emily Woof won Edinburgh Fringe Firsts and performed solo shows at the Royal Court Theatre over twenty years ago and her accomplished timing aids greatly to this charming shaggy dog story.
Starting in seeming domestic banality, Woof weaves an intricate tangle and when it eventually becomes too implausible to believe it is hard to know where the line crossed from reality to fantasy – the conference? The animal-mimicking busker? The car crash? And could Woof’s Dotty even find the boundary herself?
The clever set (Ellie Wintour) has, by the end, turned into a web as complicated as the story itself.
The projections (David Callanan) at the conference work against the white set and cement the impression of everything the presentation might have been until Dotty did things her own way.
A satisfying and entertaining exploration into the inner workings of our minds, the confusions of coupledom and how we should look at the world.
Have others seen Blizzard? What were your thoughts?
Red Bus Londinium Life 
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