Review: snug harbor (Fringe)

by Jason Booker

Written by and starring Tracey Erin Smith, snug harbor occupies a bring-your-own-venue entry to the Fringe - the show occurs on the second floor of The Centre, in a medium-sized room with four rings of comfortable meeting room chairs facing a yellow-curtained wall and a small projector screen. It appears that the audience is about to spend an hour in a 1970s rec-room watching a slide show of the latest family vacation.  Smith enters and, before long, it becomes apparent this is a personal story when she introduces herself as Tracey, gives a brief biography that summarizes her credits, then tells an anecdote about her father involving a giraffe hotel. This show is about the relationship between the two of them prior to his suicide in April 2010. Paralleling her journey for resolution with Joseph Campbell’s research into the patterns behind the quest of the epic hero, Tracey yearns for answers as to why her father kills himself in a rather spectacular fashion and what (if anything) she could have done to prevent this occurrence. She details how the news affects her and her sister, shakes up her relationship with her fiancé and shoves her into a downward spiral. Tracey (more familiar than a review usually would be, as the show encourages familiarity) brilliantly recreates some of the sorrowful tales of people from the Survivors of Suicide support group she attended and tells of the personal mentors and advice she received in coping with her grief. A fascinating show that explores the topic of suicide and the consequences and possible warning signs, it borders on therapeutic theatre, where the performer (who is often the writer) vents their issues in order to clear their psyche, a theatrical parallel that is deliberate. Smith and her director, Anita La Selva, seem to have chosen this venue and this style of presentation as a way of dealing with Smith’s own demons, retelling what happened as a way of helping others but also distancing herself from her pain. Sometimes theatre has the power to exorcise the evil within or eradicate the past and educate the future. In this case, snug harbor delivers confidently and strongly, always aware that it is entertainment (as the 80’s music in between chapter titles proves) but the show deals with subject matter often too ugly or personal to be spoken about in public. By exhuming these skeletons and mining this dark territory, Smith seeks to blur the line between show and session – and she succeeds.

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