Ania Magliano is that friend in the group chat who will overshare but you’re all the better for it. In her debut show Absolutely No Worries If Not, Magliano confidently comes out to a room of strangers – but not quite in the way you think.
Absolutely No Worries If Not is fundamentally a show about finding yourself – whether that be through the procrastination fuel of a Buzzfeed quiz, affirming your identity like Magliano did when she came out as bisexual to her parents, or just buying a cat off Gumtree. Matched with deadpan delivery and witty one-liners like “the Myer Briggs test is zodiacs for men” Magliano is a complete natural on stage with the unmatched charisma of a really cool party host (which makes sense, she’s an ENFP according to Myer-Briggs).
It’s a journey for Magliano as much as it’s a journey for the audience, and we are taken through anecdote after anecdote – all as top tier as the last. Magliano introduces us to her parents, all-girl schools, the headache of cultish Lush (both scent-wise and socially), and a sex party where the uninvited guest was a panic attack. Magliano’s tales are an eclectic mix, but her warm and self-deprecating style pulls everything together seamlessly and leads to a lot of laughs.
One particular highlight was on children’s author Jacqueline Wilson, and how she has shaped twenty-somethings today. You read that correctly, that would be the author whose work coded some quite dark hard-hitting subject matters for children growing up. Magliano reads out some particularly bizarre blurbs and book titles, and then invites the audience to create their own, leading to equally wild results.
In the same vein as some of Wilson’s greatest novels: 'Girls Under Pressure', 'Diamond Girls' and 'Girls Out Late', Magliano has some fascinating wisdom to share on horse girls, and their existence outside of girlhood – imagining them in some reality where horse girls become horse women, escaping to a magical utopia free from the confines of our society. A society that Magliano dreams up to be capitalised on by film, TV and the like in the near future. It’s a fresh take, and one to discuss late at night sitting on the floor with pals instead of existentialism.
Being in your twenties is a strange time, yet Ania Magliano’s debut show Absolutely No Worries If Not captures the essence of what it is like better than one of Jacqueline Wilson’s blurbs. One to watch out for, and an up-and-coming comedic voice of a generation.
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