Review: Dear Michelle Kwan, theSpaceTriplex

The four skaters in Dear Michelle Kwan brilliantly encapsulate the thrumming tension of what it’s like to be a teenage girl, when everything in life is a pinnacle of intensity. All adults are to be trusted and obeyed, even their maniacally sadistic skating coach Eve (Jasmyn Donya Molaei), who destroys their self-confidence in a welter of tiny, cutting and competition-inducing remarks. 

Dahlia (Isabella Fay) has just returned from Russia where she was sent to sharpen her technique and Eve is never going to let her forget the value of that opportunity. Courtney (Skyler Sajewski) won’t let a little thing like an injured elbow, or a crippling terror of Eve’s increasingly unhinged disciplinary methods, stand in her way of success. Iris (Hannah Breshears) is a subtle but pitch-perfect leader of the pack, setting the tone for who’s in, who’s out and who’s jealous of who. Marnina (Christie Spessard) is dancing to her own tune with joyously committed physical comedy reminiscent of Kate MacKinnon – when she’s not stress-vomiting on someone.

These girls share the teenage intensity of wanting to believe your own infinite specialness, a wish for the power to tap into something beyond everyday reality – they believe fervently that crystals, incense, a home-devised ceremony and just wanting it passionately enough will conjure their idol in skating and life: the inimitable Michelle Kwan. “I want to live as clean as your skating” says one; “to stand at the intersection between beauty and violence” says another.

It’s a physically demanding performance; their choreography is graceful, imaginative, and their smiles stretched with the desperation of child beauty queens. Throughout the show the stakes, and the black humour, keep ratcheting higher and higher. For instance, Eve’s utterly inappropriate choices for music and choreography for the forthcoming ice skating showcase: first, Thanksgiving, but from the turkey’s point of view, for which the vegetarian Courtney is shown a video of a turkey being slaughtered in order to help her tap into the appropriate emotion. Then, a drunken bachelorette party for Valentine’s day: “No! No! SEXY! Make your fathers cry!”

Throughout the performance, the girls engage in soliloquies addressed to their idol, Michelle Kwan, imploring her aid; asking her guidance. These grow tenser, darker, and more destructive, until finally the girls get stuck in the rink overnight due to a snowstorm with their now Svengali-channelling teacher, who has progressed from snide comments and pitting the girls against each other to actual violence. The boundaries between reality and fantasy break down until, at last, the girls conjure their longed-for fearsome power from beyond: Michelle Kwan herself appears, and they do her dark bidding.

The ending is a triumph, but for whom? They incarnate the most decorated American figure skater of all time, perfectly executing the admittedly terrifying and wildly age-inappropriate choreography set for them by their cruel skating mistress – but who is there to appreciate their dark arts, trapped alone as they are in the snow? 

I would have liked a tiny bit more of a denouement, a sense of how Alice would return through the looking glass. Will the cycle of violence continue? Will the girls break free? Or will they become the most fearsome skaters the American Olympics team has ever seen? 

Fringe shows are, alas, very strict about timekeeping, so we only have an hour with these darkly comic hyper-competitors, but I suspect there’s enough life in this material to expand it to a full-length show. I for one would willingly have kept watching – or perhaps I should say, I couldn’t look away.

Directed and Sound Design by Ryan Pangracs
Costume Design by: Chris Gavarone
Lighting Design by Kevin Malloy
Produced by Triple Lutz Productions

Dear Michelle Kwan plays at the SpaceTriplex as part of Edinbugh Fringe until Saturday 29 August.