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Call Me Crazy

 
Paul Fisher Cockburn Review by Paul Fisher Cockburn 4 Published: 2 Aug 2025 Greenside @ Riddles Court Show Dates: 1 Aug 2025-9 Aug 2025

It is a brave choice for a monologue to thread its narrative frequently with: “But we don’t talk about that.”

As a writer, she gives herself room; as a performer, she reveals depth with minimum fanfare

The particular “thats” in question are varied, but what they share in common are the ways in which women’s lives and experiences are so often denigrated or ignored by systems – especially medical systems – that are invariably designed by men.

“Not being believed is part of the package,” performer and writer Olivia Ormond says at one point, as she condenses six years of physical pain – which doctors couldn’t explain or mitigate – into a sharply felt, direct-to-audience monologue. What doesn’t help her situation is that, for reasons she goes on to explain, Ormond had spent most of her life “trying to be smaller, to disappear” – physically as much as psychologically, with the operational scars to prove it.

Yet now, for the sake of her own mental health, she needs to deal with the pain, to hopefully get it diagnosed and treated – she needs, in short, to be noticed and understood. But that also means being recognised as a person; as more than a set of symptoms, scan results and numbers. She needs to be actually heard in the silence that inevitably follows giving her medical history for the umpteenth time.

Although based on Ormond’s own life experiences, this is far from a diatribe about medical gaslighting or the gender health gap – her approach is both subtle and rounded, as she reveals the numerous, sometimes contradictory layers of a woman so frustrated by the failings of the medical profession that she swore never to return to the “sticky blue seats” of the nondescript medical reception room – and yet, a year later, found herself back in their grasp once again.

Ormond intertwines memories of childhood and of her relationship with her mother with some subtlety. As a writer, she gives herself room; as a performer, she reveals depth with minimum fanfare in terms of production. The set is a chair and clipboard; the lighting cues, under director Juju Jaworski, the only overt theatricality, naturally support the transitions in time and focus.

Ormond doesn’t always project her voice to the back of the room – and it’s not a large room – but her movements and stillness are concise and telling, contributing to a performance that lingers in the memory far more strongly than you might initially expect.

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The Blurb:

Call Me Crazy is for anyone wondering how many times people can call you crazy before you lose your f*cking mind. After the medical system fails to find the cause of a woman's pain, she is driven to extremes to be heard and is forced to question the world around her. A complex look at a woman from the inside out as she risks it all deciding what is better: to disappear, be tossed aside or give in and completely explode.