Any Day Now. Etcetera Theatre.

Evie, the protagonist of Martia Dimmer’s debut one-woman show Any Day Now, ruminates about death, hers and other people’s, at least 15 times a day. She describes herself as “10/10 on the completely insane scale”.  The irony is that Evie is only 23 and absolutely brims with manifest zest for life. Her irrational and persistent dread of mortality, or at least the process of dying, is a real-life debilitating mental health condition called thanatophobia. Dimmer’s 60-minute comedy offers up a witty, thoughtful exploration of the disorder. One which broadens into a gently wistful contemplation on the meaning of life.

Evie eschews narrative in favour of a series of conversational vignettes with variously, herself, god (or Jesus, she worries about “telling them apart” on arrival in heaven), her mother, her psychotherapist, a childhood boyfriend, and terminally ill patrons of her “death doula” cousin’s robustly named “Death Café”.  This is potential tough going for drama but Evie’s disarmingly directness, deadpan humour, talent for song, and determination to face her fears head on is a delight. Think Bridget Jones, if Bridget was obsessed with being eaten alive by sharks and planning her own glitter-strewn funeral, rather than dieting, romance, and alcohol consumption. The chaotic journey of self-discovery of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s protagonist in Fleabag is perhaps another obvious comic reference point.

Evie relationship with her “thick as shit” teenage boyfriend Ben carries the most pathos. He listens patiently to her intense irrational fears of shark attack in a Centre Parks-style wave pool and being stalked by a serial killer in the gondola of a carnival Ferris wheel. “It is not simple, is it Ben?” she tells him by way of exculpation. But to Ben, who has a habit of walking into glass doors, it is – all Evie needs is love and a listener. When Ben himself succumbs to a freak carnival accident it is down to blunt-talking Evie to speak at his memorial. “I’ve got to stop turning eulogies into inner monologues”, she says in a characteristically candid post-funeral moment of self-introspection. Her mother’s sage advice is to stop “confusing Miley Cyrus with Buddha”.

Dimmer adds momentum to the piece with a series of tunes. A warbling rendition of Cher’s Do You Believe In Life After Love set to the twang of a ukelele sums up the general tone: kind, funny, and self-deprecating. “We think infinity is made for us” Evie muses. But of course, it is not. If there is a conclusion to Any Day Now it is that in each other’s absence, life and death are meaningless. Not a ground-breaking thought perhaps but one delivered here with engaging comic effect.

Writer and Director: Martia Dimmer