Elena Belyea in This Won’t Hurt, I Promise, Tiny Bear Jaws, Edmonton Fringe 2023. Photo supplied

This Won’t Hurt, I Promise (Stage 8, Old Strathcona Performing Arts Centre)

By Liz Nicholls. 12thnight.ca

“I’m sorry about, you know…. says Elena Belyea, trailing off and gesturing vaguely towards, well, everything. “There is a lot to be mad about.” And be anxious about, and sleepless about.

We all feel it, a world gone unrecognizably toxic and mean (especially if you’re LGBTQ+).  The feeling of end times upon us has gone into our bones. Getting mad has tired us out and frayed our human edges.

In her new solo show This Won’t Hurt, I Promise, billed as “a standup hybrid,” the playwright/actor’s goal is, she says, to give us “something special …  the best 60 minutes of (our) lives” as an antidote. The setup is stand-up (and she’s a natural); the arc of the show nudges it out of that territory. This is a show where the audience gets presents; I won’t say more.   

Belyea, who has a welcoming warmth about her, has funny stories, personal ones with the ring of authenticity, to talk to us about anxiety. She’s written about anxiety before now, in plays like Miss Katelyn’s Grade Threes Prepare For The Inevitable or I Don’t Even Miss You. Post-pandemic, when she tells us about anxiety-generators — like advice from a financial banker (hey, you just need to make more money), or bedbugs, or entertainment choices that rule out anything that’s gonna hurt — it’s her appreciation of the absurdity built into the everyday that makes her smile and us laugh.

As a wordsmith (we know this from the crackling dialogue in her plays), she likes to talk things through fast, and loop back, adjusting a turn of phrase, editing thoughts on the fly. As applied to stand-up, it’s an appealing delivery.   

The show starts in the small — her own 4’11” frame for example and teeny feet — and extrapolates. And if you figure, as I did at the outset, that the title is ironic — it sounds like the fake-soothing, let-your-guard-down advice from, say, a dentist just about to jab a sabre into your cheek — you’d be wrong. It’s not like that at all.

This is all about feeling better in a time of feeling bad. And Belyea gradually takes the show into her own professional world of theatre, complaints about over-sensitive audiences, and the rise of anti-queer legislation. “What can I do with my anger?” she wonders.

This show, as you’ll find out, is one possibility. It’s built on empathy.