Review: Everything I Know About This Water Bottle is a charming exploration of climate anxiety
Written by Michael Andrew Collins, directed by Violette Ayad, performed by Ari Sgouros
Review by Charlotte Smee
I am usually a hater when it comes to a one-woman show. In the latter half of 2022, I’d already seen too many. Suzie Miller’s RBG: Of Many, One, particularly drove me up the wall then, and now, in 2025, I am still trying to articulate exactly what disappoints me so much about this form of storytelling. After chatting it out with my partner and housemate on the bus home from the last iteration of the one-woman show, Everything I Know About This Water Bottle, my current theory is that I find theatre at it’s best to be a valuable collective experience, and converting such large ideas and funnelling them through one person feels too safe, or too straightforward, to really challenge the way we think about what’s being presented to us. As a form, the monologue is inherently individualistic; emphasising the experiences of one person over all others, usually at the expense of the complex, collective whole.
And yet, despite my reservations, what interested me about Everything I Know About This Water Bottle is that it does hint at collective responsibility and collective experiences by doing something different from your usual one-woman piece of theatre. Michael Andrew Collins writes the storyteller, Aris (portrayed by Ari Sgouros), as a distinct version of herself. She is not Ari right now in 2025; she’s Ari from some unspecified point in the future where plastic water bottles are sacred artifacts worthy of telling stories about. The writing style in this piece is vaguely mystical, transforming the climate era we are living in now into myth, and retelling it to us as if it had already happened.
Because of this mythical quality and the unique retrospective narrative, Everything I Know About This Water Bottle could fit comfortably into David Finnigan’s play Scenes from the Climate Era. Director Violette Ayad and Sgouros both performed in the 2023 Belvoir production of Scenes, which was a tapestry of sixty-five short scenes depicting the spectrum of big, small, scary, and funny ideas that come into the climate anxiety conversation.
Ayad’s direction, with set and lighting by Morgan Moroney and sound by Madeline Picard, creates an intimate, lo-fi storytelling experience. A large brown calico cloth covers up the Old Fitz’s earlier show’s pastel, fluffy set. Sgouros is surrounded by only a CD player, some industrial lighting, a chalkboard and some suitcases. Sgouros operates the lighting herself (mostly), making very clear her imperfect perspective and her role as the constructor and narrator.
It certainly helps that Sgouros is a charming performer who weaves her way through the story of the water bottle (and us) and into a climate-induced disaster of our own making with humour and heart. Some moments feel inauthentic, such as the literal winks and nods to the audience. These happen at the expense of a deeper connection with the material presented and the audience, and the inauthenticity sits partially with the writing, the performance style, and the form of this piece.
Everything I Know About This Water Bottle turns the humble plastic bottle into a dramatic myth, crossing oceans and eras. While it hasn’t completely converted me from a hater of one-woman shows, it has cracked open part of my stone-cold critic heart. It’s best thought of as just one part of a whole, like everything really, that speaks to the larger issues and concerns that we have about our slowly boiling oceans and mountains of rubbish and all those unfathomably large things. Well worth seeing for the enjoyable slow reveal of the story and setting, and the charming lo-fi theatre experience.
Everything I Know About This Water Bottle played at the Old Fitz as part of their Late Night Program from 7 - 17 October 2025. It was produced by Essential Workers. Find their instagram @essentialworkers.
Images by Phil Erbacher
Charlotte is the editor of Kaleidoscope Arts Journal, a little enby and a big mess. Their friends regularly worry that they might overdose on theatre.
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