Odin’s Eye and the Art of Seeing has been my favorite show so far at the Fringe festival. I expect it will make the top five on my list even after nine days of seeing an aggressive schedule of almost 50 shows.
Alice Fernbank is a truly talented story teller. Her energy and presence on stage is captivating. I loved her portrayal of the story through gesture and posture as well as her mellifluous voice. I could see the tree Yggdrasil grow and spread on stage flowing out from her arms and spine.
This was a personal story of loss and healing, connections to other people having the same experience, and a couple of living breathing psycho-pomps who made the experience more bearable. Alice does a masterful job of interweaving her personal story with Norse mythological tales of Odin and his kin in a way that the texts inform and enrich each other.
I cried at the end of the show.
This performance really spoke to me. I don’t have cancer, but I am aging. If genetics tell true I am likely facing late onset Alzheimer’s disease in my 70s which just isn’t all that far away. I am really struggling with that possibility. I admire the grace with which Alice embraced her health crisis so that it became a transformational experience and how she turned it into positive connections and mythological level insights. I hope that I can find a way to do the same.