Toto's Song review | Melbourne Fringe Festival | La Mama Theatre

When Phillip learns his mother has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and has five months left to live, he decides to move back home. Phillip wants to use this time to say goodbye and spend time with his mother, but all Toto wants to do is whatever the hell she wants. Written by Emma Fawcett, Toto's Song is an unconventional yet touching tribute to caring for the ones we love and doing the best we can with the time we have left.

The four actors, Felicity Steele, Alex Duncan, Michelle Myers and Indra Liyanaarachchi, share a wonderful dynamic. Steele, in particular, has the challenging task of holding the work together, and she succeeds admirably. She captures Toto’s strength and vivacity while also revealing pockets of vulnerability. The changes in her physicality and speech as Toto slowly reaches the end of her life are beautifully depicted.

Duncan depicts Phillip’s anxious, somewhat lost nature as he tries to sort out the lives of those around him, including his best friend Yvonne, while struggling to figure out what he wants for himself. In contrast, Myers portrays Yvonne as someone who knows exactly what she wants and isn’t afraid to go after it, providing a confident counterpoint to Phillip’s uncertainty. Liyanaarachchi, despite looking nothing like a 14-year-old, brings an endearing quality to Solomon, whose friendship with Toto offers her companionship during the last few months of her life.

With Toto dying, Solomon’s trouble with the law, Yvonne’s journey into motherhood and Phillip caught in the middle of it all, the script could easily have become unwieldy. However, Fawcett keeps each narrative thread on track, weaving them together seamlessly and giving them the time and space they require. She injects humour and warmth into an otherwise tender exploration of grief, mourning and motherhood, largely through Toto’s acceptance of her mortality and her no-nonsense approach to her diagnosis and reality of the situation.

There is so much care and attention given to these stories, but the ending, with Toto’s inevitable death, feels uncertain about what it wants to say. The different narratives don’t quite come together, with Solomon's arc being the least satisfying. As a result, there is little catharsis for the remaining characters and the final scene, unclear in its meaning and intention, falls short of the emotional payoff that the preceding stories seem to build towards.

Kate Fryer makes effective use of the staging to move us in and out of the house with fluidity. She maintains a natural rhythm throughout, allowing the relationships between the characters to develop without rushing the quieter moments. Sam Diamond’s set design establishes both indoor and outdoor scenes, with the cast helping to execute these transitions. The interior is littered with suitcases, boxes and drawers, hinting at the memories, belongings and shared history held within its walls and between these people. Sidney Millar’s sound design subtly evokes the characters’ moods while incorporating outside sounds, such as trains and seagulls, to ground the action in its surroundings.

Toto’s Song is about the difficulty of caring for others when we are still trying to make sense of our own lives. Fawcett finds humour in the absurdity of everyday life, even in the face of death, and reminds us that love rarely comes with a clear set of instructions. Although the ending doesn’t quite deliver on the promise of the stories that precede it, the play offers a thoughtful look at the imperfect ways we try to show up for one another. 

Toto's Song was performed at La Mama Theatre between 6 - 11 October.

Image credit: Andy Signor