Naomi | Adelaide Fringe 2022 review

Patrick Livesey’s latest work is an astonishing, raw and gut-wrenching tribute to his mother and her death by suicide. It’s a triumph.

Patrick Livesey in Naomi. Picture: Supplied by artist

Naomi

Theatre and Physical Theatre

Rating: *****

The Studio at Holden Street Theatres

Until March 20

You won’t see anything as raw this festival season as Patrick Livesey’s astonishing tribute to his mother and the gut-wrenching exploration of how she came to die by suicide.

Livesey, a star of last year’s Fringe hit DIRT, and already established as an exceptional young writer and performer, plays eight characters, family and friends, who loved Naomi.

The work is based on one-on-one interviews and dramatised detailing the confusion, agony, and even guilt around how this could happen.

But as Livesey points out, nothing should be taken as fact, these are individual memories and interpretations presented as a collective that reach no particular conclusion.

Under direction by Bronwen Coleman the play is graphic, detailing substance abuse, domestic abuse, and deteriorating mental health but punctuated with humour and insight to counter the pathos.

The writing and performance are not flawless, there needs to be further definition and identification of some characters, but the sum of these parts is brilliant, brave and important.

The achingly powerful final speech asks us to talk more openly about these issues – and that we must always speak the name of those who have died.

Livesey has ensured the name Naomi resounds.