the worst of us Review by Will Winter

Emmett Aster’s the worst of us., performed from the 8th to 12th of September in the spare room of Erskineville Town Hall, was sweeter on the surface than it theoretically could be. Aster was a bard for the length of the show, though instead of distilling stories of heroism he shilled out anonymous confessions of the worst things people felt they’d ever done through poetry and verse. All of these stories circled around ‘Monsters’, the metaphor Aster continually returned to in describing the feelings of badness that haunt us all.

When we talk about confession here, it’s not just an act of sanctification, of seeking forgiveness for the sake of external purification, but an act of seeking to forgive oneself. Laden in these stories was the sense that the people who confessed were seeking to warp their guilt into self-compassion, some understanding that while mistakes can’t be taken back, they can be learned from. The severity of the ‘worst things’ people confessed to varied, but that underpinning of guilt remained the same.

It’s in Aster’s aforementioned sweetness when approaching these vulnerabilities that the strength of the show emerged. The introduction for the worst of us. explicitly framed the show (and perhaps, theatre’s artistic practice) as engaging in transformative justice. This ethos could be felt in a philosophical sense, with the spliced and interwoven stories grasping at some common humanity and engaging with these vulnerabilities through a deep, inherent empathy. Aster chose to coat the badness with sweetness, and in doing so chose to believe humans are capable of rehabilitation beyond retribution. That is a beautiful belief.

Throughout the show, audiences were provided a companion book with the full script, a decision rooted in accessibility but also helpful in teething out the ‘monsters’ which the anonymous voices are haunted by. The show flipped between poetic spoken word and sung verse, written by Aster using quotes from the real confessions. The modular shifts in tone made the narrative of the show difficult to follow clearly at points, so the companion script was quite important for anyone seeking to follow the specifics of the narrative.

This wasn’t particularly necessary though, since their voice and gentle guitar playing felt like a balm in itself. I was particularly moved by the story of Amy, a mother who grew up with an alcoholic father on an island off the coast of WA. She felt trapped at home, then married the first man who offered her a new life, a man who did not respect her the way she deserved.

Evoking Amy first as a ‘mother’ in this review feels counterintuitive, when her confession — that she packed her bags one day and left her family behind for several years in a state of complete overwhelm — was clearly an escape from the pressure of motherhood. Aster’s retelling of Amy’s story was a deeply moving meditation on persisting, treating her initial freedom after fleeing with the same delicacy as her shame when she returned to her children. In the end, she came back to that title and lived a new life as a separated parent, spending half her days with her children, Aster beautifully capturing how things happen to all of us and we learn to readjust.

With staging, Aster and their creative partner Robbie Fieldwick devised a cozy assortment of lightboxes at various heights, flicking between soft colours as the show flipped between spoken word and singing. I couldn’t tell if the colours were meant to correlate with certain stories or themes, but it certainly created a striking mood throughout. The most evocative set piece came near the end of the show, as the glow-in-the-dark stars that had been slowly blu-tacked around the venue finally beamed with their phosphorous green.

the worst of us. is almost a year old as a show, coming off the back of an award-winning run at Adelaide Fringe. Its structure is well-crafted to be a mainstay of fringe seasons, allowing for a familiar heart to run throughout the shows while changing the specifics of the songs performed. Hopefully the show continues to evolve, and as the pieces of confession are heard by new and different people, they can be transformed into messages of hope, forgiveness, and transcendence over and over again.

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Will winter attended the worst of us at Erskineville Town Hall on Friday 11 September.