The Misfortunes of a Spy and her Mystic is a story exploring mental health and spirituality through a relationship split between loyalty to professional duty and love. Spirit Freak’s three-woman show portrays a therapist’s struggles to balance her secret responsibility as a mental health worker with her ethically dubious relationship with her client.
The story follows Eve, who is hired to monitor the behaviour of the spiritual, volatile Med, with whom she develops a fast friendship (and eventually more). The three-person cast excels at displaying Eve’s struggle between her job to reporting on her client’s behaviour and her emotional commitment to said client. Eve is the only character who shares scenes with the other two—Meda and her boss—which allows the audience to see her internal conflict, externalised through her growing difficulty to interact normally with either character.
Meda’s actor makes excellent use of the space available as a method of characterisation. Her unpredictability and theories about spirituality (a mix of Buddhism, Shamanism, and Paganism as they, respectively, allow people to be sad, encourage self-love, and connect with nature) are paired with eccentric style and grand, unrestrained movements. Meda is evidently unafraid to take up the space she needs and achieves that both physically and through her blinding, earnest honesty.
Furthermore, Meda’s unusual fashion sense seems to fulfil two functions. Firstly, the bright colours and layering vibrantly contribute to her peculiarity and unconventional personality and beliefs.
Secondly, to me it echoed the confidence and forwardness she displayed in shifting her relationship with Eve to romance; The Misfortunes of a Spy and her Mystic’s queer storyline is what ultimately makes Eve’s spying such a betrayal. Meda’s costumes can be interpreted as ‘high femme,’ a term belonging to lesbians who are very feminine and often don’t appear overtly or obviously queer. The character is bold and standout in every way, not limited to her gesture, costume, ideas, and unrestrained emotions.
Inspired by one actor’s experiences as a mental health worker, The Misfortunes of a Spy and her Mystic is a raw exploration of loyalty, perception, and internal conflict through a queerness and complex spiritual contemplation. The audience leaves with no clear conclusion and the opportunity to ponder Meda’s spiritual lessons and whether Eve was right to get Meda to flee.
The Misfortunes of a Spy and her Mystic is running until 29 August at the Olive Studio at Greenside at George Street. Buy tickets here.
Image by Jasmine Maldonado, provided for press use.
