THEATRE REVIEW

MARCH 2026 | Volume 261

 

Granted, finding one really good script a year to produce is easier than putting together an entire multi-play season. But give Mitch & Murray (actually Aaron and Kate Craven) credit: their sole annual production is almost always a highlight. This year’s show, the North American premiere of British playwright Phoebe Eclair-Powell’s Harm, is both absolutely exhilarating and deeply, darkly depressing.

The exhilaration comes from the tight, lively, imaginative direction of Jennifer Copping and the remarkable solo performance of Kelli Ogmundson as the character called only Woman. The depression derives from the material:the ubiquitous, performative, online world of Instagram and hashtags, the dark corners of the digital terrain from which the trolls and haters operate, and the ease with which ordinary people can find themselves trapped in that labyrinth.

Ogmundson plays an abject London estate agent who tells us her story. She’s 39 years old, lonely, cynical and isolated. Inher crappy one-room flat (David Roberts’ crowded set) she spends her weekends watching pigeons fucking outside her window and YouTube videos of car accidents. She actively posts and messages acquaintances but no one ever comments or answers.

One day her colleague and only sex partner, Barry (she gives him hand jobs),passes her a listing for a house. The client who wants to buy it, Alice, turns out to be an influencer with over a million followers. It’s unclear what Alice does besides constantly photographing herself and posting on Instagram but our Woman is instantly attracted: “Her hair is in this bun on top of her head and I want to eat it.” Woman develops a complicated love-hate for her: “I want Alice to suffer something unfortunate or to be friends with me. I don’t know. Both.”

Alice is beautiful, popular and pregnant with a handsome boyfriend, and for a while Woman feels some of Alice’s reflected glory. She can post first-hand about Alice to her many fans and admirers. But mostly she hates this woman who appears to have everything she lacks, so she finds a corner of the internet where the Alice-haters live, a site called Tittle, and behind the mask of Madbitch11 she starts posting destructive material sabotaging Alice’s life and career.

The consequences compound and entanglements deepen over the course of the play’s brisk 70 minutes. Suffice to say that none of it makes Woman’s life, or Alice’s, any better. There’s a tiny, faint light of possibility in Woman’s stepmother Kathy with her twin boys. Woman hates and resents Kathy, too, but … the outcome of that relationship remains to be seen.

Ogmundson’s performance is sterling. Woman speaks at a brisk clip in a thick London accent and finds funny voices and accents for all the other characters while whipping around her flat or lying on the floor or in bed with the covers over her head. She finds a lot of dark, often self-deprecating humour in the characters and situations. But without indulging or milking it, Ogmundson also makes Woman’s despair utterly transparent, sometimes with just a brief silence.

The playwright has provided powerfully volatile material and this actor and her director, along with Matthew Macdonald-Bain’s effective sound design and Chengyan Boon’s lighting,exploit it beautifully. The explosions are quiet and deadly.

The play made me think hard about my two granddaughters who are not far from their teenage years, and the world they’re about to enter. It’s terrifying.

 

 

 

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