Aberdeen is an ode to Kurt Cobain, to music, to loving, to suffering and to pain. Cassie Workman takes us on a frantic trip to Aberdeen, Washington to wander alongside and learn from the ghost of Kurt Cobain. The scenic descriptions of Aberdeen are vivid and depressing, encapsulated most powerfully by the refrain of the ‘fucking ugly rain.’ 

Workman uses the round expertly, you almost never see her back and are desperate for her eye contact, which she gives intensely and comically throughout. Criss-crossing a rectangular carpet in a black cardigan, with wild widened eyes, Workman plunges us immediately into her dark and desperate mission to rescue the star from his inevitable end. Workman’s standup background shines through in the delivery of this serious show, in the way she threads together the narrative, in her timing and tone. The show is an hour of rhythmic stanzas in varied patterns, which feel sometimes song-like. The lilting stanzas are satisfying and smooth, and the disruptions in its flow are perhaps too few but are enticing and refreshing. 

Despite Cobain’s place of death being devoid of beauty, or the final five days of his life being unrecorded, Workman uses poetry to fantasise and empathise with this very specific time and space, whilst maintaining that ‘these days are his, and forever his alone.’ Clearly well-researched both in historical fact and in spirit, you feel an intense intimacy with the way Workman explores this space.

At times it is hard to know whether it is Cobain or Workman that needs to be saved, the show is about both of them and neither of them, it is about being alive, facing death and trying to understand it all. There is something healing about the show, an invitation to let yourself feel, to let her words wash over and through you. You have to commit to following the narrative, or you might wind up confused in a field of ghosts. But if you can give it all your attention, hold her eyes and let her take you in, there is something – as the audience member next to me whispered at the end – ‘almost perfect’ about this performance. 

Review by Ruby Kay Dalwood