Cath Styles’ Shift takes its name from the fact the comedian earns her salary working as a nurse. She performed the show in blue scrubs and the content was entirely dedicated to things she’s encountered on the job over the last 25 years.
Styles warned us at the beginning of the show that it would contain a lot of black comedy. This presaged plenty of downcast moments, perhaps no surprise given she works in the field of psychiatric nursing. However, a lot of the time she forgot to buffer these with jokes, making it less black comedy than a stark account of insanity and the manifestation of the death impulse.
Needless to say, Shift didn’t provide 50 minutes of belly laughs, but that’s not to say Styles’ exposition of her work life wasn’t interesting. In hearing testimonies about the daily life (or nightly life) of a psychiatric nurse, one was reminded of the vast number of people who suffer from mental instability or are possessed by an urge to self-destruct. Styles rarely offered critical analyses of such realities, though she did suggest that a lot of people who’re impulsively driven to attempt suicide haven’t digested the fact that a successful attempt would result in death.
Shift was indicative of how we’re able to unite in a mutual appreciation of existential finitude. It also alerted us to the fact that, while exceptional cases are testing the limits of their existence, the majority of folks are engaged in a fight to preserve life at all costs.
But for what? Well, procreation is one thing, and it’s something Styles has done a lot of. The only times in her adult life when she’s taken leave from work is to give birth. This led to repeated emphasis on the inflexibility of her daily schedule, forever going from one thing to the next, never able to sit still. As a result, she told us, she’s become envious of normal people who’re able to go to BBQs and walk the dog in the park.
But one had to wonder, who are these so-called normal people? How have they gained such easygoing lives? It seems a false assumption that there’s a class of ‘normal people’ traipsing through life without a worry, in contrast to the rest of us stuck in a Kafkaesque struggle.
Shift wasn’t big on laughs, but it raised plenty of debate-worthy questions.
BY AUGUSTUS WELBY
