Simon Ward reviews Fickle Eulogy at the Hope Theatre, 207 Upper Street, London N1 1RL

Debuting at the Edinburgh Fringe last year, Nikol Kollars’s devastating solo show, directed by Javier Galitó-Cava, is now running at The Hope under the aegis of the Camden Fringe. It is clearly a deeply personal piece of work, drawing on the actor’s own life, but its message has a powerful universal resonance.

Kollars plays Ann, a woman preparing to deliver a eulogy for her mother Sue in the last hour before the mourners arrive. Although properly speaking they should not be termed ‘mourners’ as Sue was adamant that she did not want any funeral ceremony. Instead it is a birthday party, celebrating her life. More troublingly, we also earn that Sue died from COVID-19, having refused to wear a mask or get vaccinated. So Ann is struggling with her feelings of anger towards her mother – surely she hastened her own death by being brainwashed by conspiracy theories and lies. Even Sue’s own colleagues may have been unwittingly responsible for transmitting the virus. But how can any of this be discussed within the well-defined parameters of a eulogy?

Although this is a one-woman show, it is greatly enlivened by the addition of an Alexa-style device, which amusingly reminds Ann when she has breached any of the protocols which she has pre-defined for her talk. This therefore precludes any displays of strong emotion, and certainly forbids swearing. Yet how can she avoid high emotion and swearing when she feels so bereft of a mother who has been taken away too soon. She knows all the clichés about her mother being ‘in a better place’ and that she ‘lives on in your heart’ but none of that is of any use to her now. She finds time to take a sly potshot at the idea that an AI-generated version of her mother might be some comfort in a funny video sequence demonstrating just how useless that would be. She knows that she will never find out the secret ingredient to her Mom’s legendary Oreo cheesecake. Christmas will never be the same, with the the huge fake Christmas tree and magical lit-up houses. Nothing will ever be the same.

In the end, it is in the oldest of traditions that she finds solace – her Hawaiian heritage. There is an impossibly moving sequence where she sings farewell to her mother, clinging to the desperate hope that somehow, some way, they may meet again. The show concludes with a tribute to Kollars’s own mother, displaying the family photos of the characters and scenes we have come to know. This is a witty, at times hilarious, but ultimately deeping touching show, which is brutally honest about the realities of grief and loss. It feels like she has actually achieved the perfect eulogy – acknowledging the challenges, the anger, the guilt and confusion but finally accepting that ‘what will remain of us is love’.

Fickle Eulogy is running until Monday 18th August at the Hope Theatre, 207 Upper Street, London N1 1RL