A Sudden, Disturbing To Do List at 53two

Phoebe likes lists. You know, the good kind – shopping, stationery, ranking past jobs by how much they made her want to staple her earlobes to the table. She likes the more obscure kind, too – least favourite numbers, missed opportunities, things half-finished or never started. They live everywhere: on her mirror, her fridge, her skin. She’s pretty sure keeping them is her healthiest habit, propelling her towards being the most productive, best version of herself. So what if they’re spiralling out of control, and a pink fluffy monster now spoons her while she sleeps. She’s sure there isn’t a problem. Then again, she is suddenly listing all the ways she might die.

Written and performed by Eleanor May Blackburn, Phoebe is a 28-year-old journalist living with OCD. As her lists begin to spawn more lists, her sense of control slips. At least she’s got Fred, though – a pink, fluffy, oddly helpful monster who appears under her duvet, cooks her meals and does her washing. The humour is dry, specific and absurd, and it follows Phoebe’s own internal logic rather than standing outside it. That same logic becomes harder to hold onto, though, as we get deeper into Phoebe’s experience.

What emerges is less a traditional narrative than an evocation of a state of mind: restless, looping, difficult to step outside of. Reviewers at the Edinburgh Fringe praised the show’s ability to draw audiences into Phoebe’s mind, with Blackburn’s performance singled out for its energy, precision and emotional force. Through fast-paced shifts in speech, voice notes, sound and physical theatre, A Sudden, Disturbing To Do List pulls the audience into that experience without flattening it into explanation or diagnosis. Instead, it builds empathy the hard way – by making us sit inside the strange, exhausting logic of a mind trying to keep itself together.