Finding your way to Pembroke New Cellars is always a slightly stressful experience. So I felt placated when, taking my seat for Emily Knutsson’s one-woman show Me and My Year of Casual ‘Monasticism’, I was greeted by a bardcore version of Shakira’s ‘Hips Don’t Lie’. The show, its title recalling Ottessa Moshfegh’s compulsive readable 2018 book My Year of Rest and Relaxation, promised settling into an accessible and engaging under-an-hour of new student comedy.

To a large extent, that rang true. Emily Knutsson’s piece is engaging and arresting from the outset: crowd-work is effective, the use of visual aids was genuinely additive, and it was clear as an audience member that I was watching a show that knows what it is and what it wants to say.

“It was clear as an audience member that I was watching a show that knows what it is and what it wants to say”

Assessing Knutsson’s work at face value, it’s intelligent and polished overall: sustained references to The Rule of Saint Benedict, for example, concisely demonstrate Knutsson’s passion as a medievalist (at undergrad and in general) and are a good framing device for the ‘lessons’ learnt in the hour, providing much-needed pacing. Further to that point, the event forming the emotional core of the show and the sensitivity with which Knutsson relays it is where it peaks – wistfulness and genuine frustration are woven with mythological references to Greek god ‘Pan’, ‘the worst guy you could ever meet’. Knutsson’s storytelling and the sensitive topics she covers are empowering, and her evident passion for this project shone through via assured delivery which was essential at the anchor point of the story.

Elements of tech, for example the aforementioned ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ and occasional lighting changes (with credit to production team members Jasper Harris and Christina Huang), supported the central story and made the audience’s experience more immersive. Some of my challenges in connecting with a fair few of the hour’s comedic beats would have been solved by more technical elements (lighting cues and more concretely using the PowerPoint pitch deck interactively), though credit is due to Knutsson for a thoroughly entertaining presentation.

“Knutsson’s piece is, despite some faults in execution, tightly written and well-constructed”

That said, the strength of the show’s centre – where Knutsson really embodied her experience and straightforwardly told the story rather than gesturing back to visual aids – regrettably didn’t carry through the remainder of the show. Too often, strong writing was curtailed by a lack of clear direction. This show would benefit from a second pair of eyes, particularly regarding movement and the embodiment of story. More generally, the large table and chair in the centre of the performance space, while effective for Knutsson’s confessional style of conversation with the audience, in many ways restricted her movement. When she was standing up, facing out and talking directly to the audience was when this show soared, and I felt that the furniture in some instances stunted Knutsson’s physicality which otherwise seemed instinctively very good.

Another instance where editing or redirection may have been helpful was the ‘producer’s pitch’ element of the story, when the audience are producers who Knutsson as ‘Mary’ is pitching Casual ‘Monasticism’ to. This was a setup which I felt actually had a lot of comedic promise (references to stock characters and tropes) and also allowed for moments of acerbic analysis of students at Cambridge. At some point this was abandoned, and the hour would have benefitted from making a clearer decision as to whether this was straightforward storytelling or a TV-show-within-a-play (Hamlet, eat your heart out). This would have also been helpful from an audience perspective, as a tighter and improved structure would encourage more interaction from audience members.

All in all, Knutsson’s piece is, despite some faults in execution, tightly written and well-constructed, mindful of St Benedict’s charge to “hour by hour keep guard over one’s every act”. Knutsson’s skill as both a performer and writer was clear, and I have no doubt that the already very good Casual ‘Monasticism’ can, with a pinch of scholarly monasticism, be ‘biblically brilliant’.

Me and My Year of Casual ‘Monasticism’ is showing at Pembroke New Cellars from Wednesday 23rd to Saturday 30th of November