Actual Size - Tanyalee Davis

Tanyalee names the elephant in the room right at the beginning of the show. She’s Canadian! Her experience as a person of very short stature forms the backbone of the show. There is gentle education and sideways challenges to stereotypes blended with physical enactments and using her physical attributes to poke at conventional thinking. The difficulties of T-Rex arms provided many chuckles. There were many boom, boom moments. “You mean I am in Little Sista Café off Little Collins Street – come on” and “I’m big in Japan.” There was consistent laughter from the audience.

The show moves along briskly with tales exposing the challenges and pleasures of life at her actual size. The subtle tortures of motels and travel, being trapped in her friend’s lounge room by child safety equipment, swimming with a variety of marine life, a really explosive and terribly inconvenient bowel motion and the difficulties of full size toilets  are all laid bare.

Tanyalee steps close to murky waters around children and sex but with an eye on the audience finds the right tone. There are a few too many ‘big bootie’ jokes, at least one too many exposures of a salaciously flicking tongue and too many returns to the introduction of the travel theme. But…the basic thing is Tanyalee is funny, generous with her energy and cleverly verbal.  

Ruth Richter