Forgotten Tributary theatre review: A troublesome journey
A surreal solo voyage through grief and memory
There’s Charlie the orange cat, a raving poet and a woman called Corduroy. Before Forgotten Tributary, these names will almost certainly mean nothing to you. Yet after boat ride on a rough river, this show clarifies that something so simple as a name is in fact worth everything. Solo show Forgotten Tributary tells the perilous, nautical tale of a young man navigating through a family member’s degenerative condition. Straddling the line between fantasy epic and an exploration of grief, a young man is ripped from reality on a routine boat ride and finds himself pursued by an illness personified as a creature.
The Nameless Thing, greedy for all the young man seeks to preserve, has taken from many before. Armed with props and ethereal lines to read, it’s up to the crowd to guide Frisbee, so that he (maybe) does not also become one of the robbed. An earnest performance manages to balance nostalgia and fear, with little believable mannerisms that bring you with Frisbee at every step. The production and music add carefully to this balance, making a final product that is a headfirst confrontation of all that makes love and life achingly impermanent.
As ephemeral as it is strange, Forgotten Tributary cautions us that the power to tell our stories is not only sacred for entertainment’s sake, but for the very survival of our selves.
Forgotten Tributary concluded at The Yurt in The Courtyard of Curiosities at the Migration Museum on March 22.