EDINBURGH 2023: Review: THE STRONGEST GIRL IN THE WORLD, Greenside @ Nicolson Square

Truly Siskind-Weiss’s father died when she was ten years old. Since then, her life has been divided by that watershed. In a tender monologue where she tries to make sense of death, Siskind-Weiss mourns the person she could have been. Grown up too quickly but still treated like a child, she now yearns for the simpler time when she could be reliant on someone. With sardonic dark humour, she revives a childhood filled with love.

Strength and independence are supposed to be positive traits, but they’re most certainly not when you’re just learning to live. She paints the feeling of losing one’s fragility at a young age with deep empathy and a subtly funny script, sharing sweet memories of her dad and tracing the steps that led her to this point. An underlying sadness permeates even the comedy, as she explains how she re-read Twilight 55 times when she was 12 and watched Hannah Montana reruns on repeat.

“I like to know how things end,” she says, and, with that simple brushstroke, she summarises the loss of emotional safety that happened overnight. The text moves between irony and depth, narration and reflection. It could do with a stronger ending, but the writer leaves the audience with a delicate final image. It becomes a therapeutic show, for Siskind-Weiss as well as the crowd. 

The Strongest Girl in the World runs at Greenside @ Nicolson Square on the following dates: 8-12, 14-19 August.

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