For late 20s Fin, life is challenging. Pedalling on her bicycle to make less than a pound an hour, the cycle courier has it tough trying to make ends meet while struggling to get her illustration career off the ground. Yet it is her sudden pregnancy and the trials and traumas that such a life-changing event can bring that move this one-woman show out of its whimsical start and into something much more moving.
The production was originally performed in 2001, and a quarter of a century later, original performer Sam Holland Bunyan has collaborated with Genevieve Labuschagne to rework the piece with new material. While the production is not necessarily a product of its time, its messages and events are somewhat timeless; the notion of a cycle courier feels a little more contemporary, and this helps to make Fin’s (Labuschagne) character a little more relatable.
Over just under an hour, the production meanders and drifts, a little frustratingly and seemingly on purpose, with Labuschagne’s delivery slow and precise, making Fin’s arrival, her courier woes and her obsession with folk song Melanie Safka whimsical and charming. In this sense, the production sets a sweet tone in which Fin seems to bumble through life, reflecting on her past with Tom, her rocky relationship with her current boyfriend, Alfie, and her displeasing of her Catholic parents.
Yet once Fin is pregnant, things change. The production is much more vibrant from this moment. The deliberate inclusion of illustrations on the back wall of Fin’s mum and dad is a neat insight into Fin’s head and evokes a sense of tense disapproval at her pregnancy out of wedlock, despite the pair being just floating drawings. Labuschagne multi-roles successfully here too, bending into the shapes of the elderly pair with comedic ease.
Fin’s pregnancy, however, takes a desperate, stark turn, and the production here, under Labuschagne’s superb portrayal, becomes raw and grief-stricken. It is a terrific delivery of a mother at her wit’s end with what has happened to her, yet the careful portrayal is still an understated, pained manner is absorbing.
While the production could use a little trimming and refining, a hapless midwife, for example, makes one too many appearances, Am I Losing My Mind or Just Losing Weight is a deft look at pregnancy, womanhood and the individual experience. The inclusion of Safka’s music layered over some of the play’s most heartfelt scenes lands with aplomb, with Labuschagne shining once Fin is able, in an evocative finale, to breathe.
