Thank You and Goodnight ~ [The White Bear Theatre] ~ Review

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In the twenty first century is there still really such a thing as a spinster? Or in this modern age, where we’ve collectively decided that a woman’s place is slightly more than just marrying and popping out babies, is it an outdated concept founded in archaic patriarchal ideals? Well no prizes for guessing my opinion on the topic. Then why, still, do we as women constantly determine our worth based on our relationship status? Why are we so fixated on finding our other half? Ha, ‘Other half’, what a horrible expression. As though we aren’t a whole person until we’ve found someone who tolerates us enough to marry us! Though it’s difficult not to buy into the idea that we’re not complete without someone to fall asleep next to each night, not when the usual response to the simple statement ‘I’m single’ is usually some variation of ‘aw, don’t worry, you’ll find someone’ – because in our society we just can’t fathom that anyone could be happy on their own. The pursuit of this happiness is at the very heart of what Emilia Stawicki’s one woman show THANK YOU AND GOODNIGHT is all about. It’s a look at the social pressure women feel to find ‘the one’ and unpacks one woman’s answers to the deceptively complex question ‘so, why do you think you’re still single?’

Meet Emilia, she’s bright, outgoing, funny, and single. She was educated at an all girl’s Catholic school where her education regarding love and sex was almost non-existent, any mention of the topic delivered coated in a nice thick layer of fear, guilt, and shame. She tells us what her adolescence was like, how each experience of love and lust shaped the person she is today and can perhaps go some way to explaining her perpetual single status. She tells us about living in Salt Lake City, Utah, with its large Mormon population, how being among that community shaped the way she saw herself and how others saw her. The thing she keeps coming back to is the Madonna/Whore dichotomy, the two groups society places women into – either we’re nurturing, sweet, virtuous, and mothering, or we’re promiscuous, bold, loud, and exciting. Which are you? Bit of both? Odd... it’s almost as though these attributes are not mutually exclusive and women are complex beings unable to be pigeon-holed into one of two lists. Not that it stops people trying, as Emilia has experienced and highlighted so well in her one woman show. My personal favourite anecdote features a date during which the man she was seeing said he wasn’t interested in a second date because Emilia is ‘the kind of girl guys marry but not the kind of girl guys date’. Yep.

Presented like a stand-up routine THANK YOU AND GOODNIGHT is an hour of Emilia Stawicki baring her heart to us armed with nothing but a board, a marker, and some well placed sound tech. For a show that makes you want to immediately pack your bags and move to an island where there are no men or patriarchal structures it’s actually incredibly funny, I promise. Emilia’s routine has buckets of girl-power presented with comical and neurotic energy. Her comedic timing is impeccable, her physicality infinitely watchable. She illustrates her points with amusing diagrams and soundbites, even pulling the audience into the conversations and inviting us to respond. She’s relatable, in fact she’s like the personification of that little voice in our heads that freaks out every time we think about the perils and pitfalls of the dating world. There are a lot of single women in London who could benefit from sitting down and watching THANK YOU AND GOODNIGHT, it’s a comforting sort of feeling knowing that we aren’t really alone.

Parts of the show reminded me a little of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag, with elements of comediennes like Hannah Gadsby and Rebel Wilson. The more serious and hurtful a topic or anecdote is, the sillier and more over the top Emilia’s performance becomes. A thicker layer of make-up to cover the deeper emotional scars. There aren’t many things more powerful than being hit with something dark and serious whilst you’re mid-way through a proper belly laugh, the emotional whiplash making the points being made that much more impactful.

Thank You and Goodnight is a celebration of womanhood, both passionate and authentic, a tale of feminist self-discovery that will make you think very carefully about the next date you go on.



Thank You and Goodnight ~ [The White Bear Theatre] ~ Review
★★★★☆