I can fully sympathise with Sophia Wolbrom when she tells us that she is a planner. It’s one of the fun things that anxiety can cause us sufferers to do. You are never going to just turn up somewhere; your anxieties simply won’t allow it. No, for you, there must be a full set of plans. There must be timings, locations, plans for when things might not quite go as smoothly as all that initial planning was for; nothing is to be left to chance.
For Wolbrom, the planning has been drummed into her from a young age, a family trait all the way back to her great-grandfather when he had to escape Nazi Germany in the1930s. In fact, it is so ingrained that she is surprised to learn it’s not normal and that none of her friends does the same. She asks, “Is it me, am I the weird one?” when she discovers how different her actions are.
Danger Plan! Is Wolbrom’s attempt to put this all into some sort of order, told through a collection of amusing stories and equally amusing songs. The great opener ‘Worse Case Scenario’ actually makes you wonder if she might come from a family of doomsday preppers as she sings of having your emergency supplies all ready to go at the drop of a hat; food rations, water, medical supplies, the full works. But it’s not to be; she isn’t quite that insane with her planning.
Wolbern is a great storyteller, filled with funny anecdotes that, if anything, leave us with a lot more questions regarding her interesting life than answers. A story about a drug raid at a shop in New York makes you think there is so much more she could be telling us. But she does need to draw her stories together better or find a way to better connect them to one another. At times it feels as if she has suddenly remembered something new to tell us and dives headlong into a new story, leaving us wondering where the connection to the last is. Each moment is almost standing alone, unsupported by the one that came before or will come after.
Where it is clear she has worked hard on the structure is in the song interludes. Each has a purpose, a connection to that section of her story. Her voice is full and clear, as is her guitar playing. There is no reason she could not build the whole piece further around her music. Hopefully, she could introduce more to create an even stronger structure.
The show’s production is also very basic, unsurprising given it’s performed in a simple shipping container, with just the one spotlight. You’d hope future incarnations of the show would find a way to incorporate lighting, giving more depth to her stories, especially when things occasionally take a darker turn. As an American, her prepping takes on a whole new level during the 2016 Presidential election, for example.
As she reaches the end, she talks about the importance of finding one another in the dark, how she has created a network, and why no one is ever out of contact. It’s her desire for this human connection that makes her storytelling so delightful, so full and rich in colour. The show may still be quite basic, but there are certainly the building blocks in place to suggest that in twelve months’ time she could be back in Edinburgh with a much fuller offering, one that would connect with us all.
Written by Sophia Wolbrom
Produced by Know Smoke Productions
Danger Plan! has completed its performances at Hoots @ Potterrow as part of the Edinburgh Fringe
