Freefalling: A wild, extraordinary story that you couldn’t make up

Freefalling

Draíocht, Blanchardstown

★★★★☆

There’s a point early in Freefalling when the playwright and actor Georgina Miller, whose own story this is, comes out with that old you-couldn’t-make-it-up line. She then goes on to share a wild and extraordinary story about a series of true incidents over six months in her real life that ... you couldn’t make up.

It’s a seemingly simple format, a straight narrative in the first person, speaking directly to the audience, about events from 2009 BC. There’s a bit of prefiguring of the story, and we know early on that, for example, she came through it (and can walk again) and that she now has two children. (That BC is Before Children.)

The story: there she is, footloose and in search of adventure and possibly meaning, travelling Asia and Australasia for six months, jumping out of planes, surfing waves, diving with sharks, falling happily in love, sometimes suffering from “chronic Irishness”. While visiting an old friend now living in Samoa – “come and relax in paradise” – Miller is afflicted by a sudden, mysterious and painful paralysis.

It’s a rare, deadly-serious autoimmune condition, Guillain-Barré syndrome, and she’s stranded in agony in a poorly resourced hospital on a tiny island. She needs a ventilator quickly, and an airlift to Australia for it. This is exactly when an earthquake and tsunami strike.

Druid Theatre to mark 50th anniversary with Synge-Shakespeare double bill

Tommy Tiernan to star in new Kevin Barry play as part of Abbey programme

Lynne Parker: The Abbey does so much. But Ireland needs a national theatre for the 21st century

Miller is an easy and dramatic storyteller, building the set-up and drama – the highs, terror, incidental humanity – of her own life, mixing daredevil adrenaline with a lightness of touch, humour and a sardonic tone.

The creative team behind this Rough Magic and Lime Tree/Belltable production in association with Fidget Feet, directed by Lynne Parker, shapes it into something beyond its far from simple telling. Emma Fisher-Owen’s domed metallic tree, lit by Zia Bergin-Holly, frames the action, and Fiona Sheil’s evocative music and sound add tone and the voices of Millers’ future children, Noah and Saoirse, who punctuate the story, urging ‘You can do it, Mum,’ recalling Things That Mummy Did and offering snippets of aphoristic wisdom: You don’t get rid of yesterday by talking about it all the time; you get rid of its effect on you by moving forward.

Chantal McCormick’s aerial choreography is by turns exhilarating and delicate, nuanced, expressionistic. The choice of aerial as storytelling method is inspired: a terrific marriage of theme and function, adding immeasurably to the experience. Miller performs in a harness suspended from a trapeze bar, which the aerial rigger (and, here, performer) José Portillo controls with great skill via a pulley contraption from the side, moving up and down a pole, tweaking and twisting to manipulate Miller’s movement, allowing her to swoop and sweep around and above the stage, or nimbly dance through life, or cower in crippling pain. The effect is like a live human string puppet, a marionette with a soul.

In this absorbing, entertaining and skilful show there’s reflection, too, and lessons, about how unlucky she was, but also lucky; about the world’s inequality, which saved her while abandoning others; and where the meaning of life can be quietly found. And also – surely there’s a sponsorship opportunity here – get the best travel insurance available.

Continues at Draíocht, as part of Dublin Theatre Festival, Saturday, October 12th