Odin’s Eye and the Art of Seeing

Masterful, mesmerising, life-affirming! This is storytelling in its purest form: a lone woman on a dark stage takes us from Wirral to Valhalla, her beautiful voice weaving a spell over the audience. I would have happily sat and listened for another hour.

This is a gorgeous piece that brings to life norse cosmology. Alice expertly weaves together her own personal story of receiving treatment for eye cancer with myths of Odin, Freya and Mimir. She stands in the place between both our human world and the magical realm of myth. With gorgeous movement, powerful stage presence and well chosen words, she conjures vivid images of the World tree, Mimir's pool and Asgard. Alice deftly takes us from the nine realms to the back of a taxi on the way to the hospital. It's pure storytelling shamanism.

Here, Alice applies a mythopoetic lens to help us understand how we might navigate challenges of ill health and uncertainty. This show is a must see for those interested in norse myth and indeed anyone who might be seeking wisdom that stretches beyond modern medical diagnoses and deep into the roots of Yggdrasil.

Alice has created an expertly woven performance about her time in an eye hospital in the North of England. Being driven back and forth by a kind taxi driver who hails from an eccentric family, with whom she makes friends and the Norse tale of Odin which runs concurrently throughout.
This was for me a profoundly moving piece of performance, expertly told. I would describe it as a masterclass in storytelling as it is with great ease that Alice takes us through these different landscapes conjuring underworlds, magic trees and pools and the journey that will lead Odin ruler of the Asgardian Gods to give up anything in the pursuit of wisdom.
If only I could tell you in as engaging a way about this wonderful show as Alice can do with her exceptional storytelling prowess, that includes physicality, song, articulation, emphasis and gesture. A skillful and well crafted show that touches the heart strings and leaves you changed forever. Grasp this opportunity while you can.

Alice shares Norse myth with her personal story with tender compassion - the blending of insight and true wisdom and vulnerability of god and human managing the unknown. Her timing and placing and embodiment are flawless, she becomes a tree, a wild haired warrior, a magician conjuring healing and giants and colours fill the bare stage. Beautiful and moving. Go!

Alice Fernbank has mesmerising presence on stage. Alone, she conjures the world of Nordic gods as vividly as she does the eye cancer clinic where she is treated. The two worlds are inextricably linked in her minds eye and therefore so easily in ours, Odin loses an eye and becomes a seer but how could Alice have seen her cancer coming? After all it was just a routine trip to Specsavers. Powerful and moving in simplicity and strength. This is a beautifully honest hour.

I loved this show very much. Storytelling at its best. Simple, honest, clear, gentle, loving, beautiful, healing are some of the qualities of Alice's piece. The powerful blending of the Norse myth of Odin's Eye with her personal experiences of a major eye health scare and treatment took me on a deep expedition through the cosmic significance of our life on earth. The seemingly mundane begins to reveal itself as the unfolding of the threads of personal destiny, whole the mythological resonates with the most profound questions of contemporary human life. Masterful and deeply satisfying. Highly recommended.

Odin's Eye and the Art of Seeing has been my favorite show so far at the festival. I expect it will make the top five on my list even after nine days of seeing an aggressive schedule of almost 50 shows.

Alice Fernbank is a truly talented story teller. Her energy and presence on stage is captivating. I loved her portrayal of the story she was telling through gesture and posture as well as her mellifluous voice. I could see the tree Yggdrasil grow and spread on stage flowing out from her arms spine.

This was a personal story of loss and healing, connections to other people having the same experience, and a couple of living breathing psychopomps who made the experience more bearable. Alice does a masterful job of interweaving her personal story with Norse mythological tales of Odin and his kin in a way that texts inform and enrich each other. I cried at the end of the show.

I highly recommend both this show in particular, and the Scottish Storytelling Center as a venue. They curate the material presented there beautifully. Everything you could go to see at the center is going to be really good.

Highly enjoyable show. Visually very simple staging, but this only focused my attention even more sharply upon a compelling performance. Recommending to friends, an utterly mesmerising storytelling full of nuance and charm.

What an amazing storyteller, effortlessly juxtapositions human experience with gods’ stories.
Loved it. Go and see it.

I love a storytelling show that combines myth and personal experience, and what a deeply authentic and moving story Alice has to tell - her journey of being diagnosed and treated for an incredibly rare and life-threatening eye tumour, echoed by the legend of Odin's sacrifice of the sight of one eye in his quest for wisdom. She weaves the two strands together with immense skill and a calm compelling presence that commanded our attention from the first moment we walked into this beautiful little theatre, and engaged us fully until her final words. A creative tour de force, and one which will touch the hearts of every listener.

As someone who recently visited Specsavers with an anomaly in my left eye (thankfully benign and correctable) and an interest in mythology this skillful weaving together of Norse myth and personal story had a particular resonance. But whatever your own story, this story is worth hearing.

Pure storytelling prowess. A weaving of legend, myth, and stark mortal realities.
Alice mixes these elements into an hour of rich and nourishing story stew. Moving and serious, yet adventurous and fun. What a pleasure to be fed. What a pro.
And what a great oasis of a venue!
Go See!

The mesmeric storyteller Alice Fernbank weaves two worlds into one beautifully crafted piece. Her own journey after a visit to Specsavers which may have saved her life, with the extra-ordinary world of Odin and the Norse gods, which are so much a part of her international storytelling career. Her stillness and power are a 5* craft class in holding an audience. Not surprising our tears and cheers resonated in the Storytelling Centre - this most comfortable of Fringe venues. She plays alternate Odd days at 15.15. Self-produced so please try to buy a ticket if you are a producer if you can afford it.

Alice Fernbank, a longstanding professional storyteller, finds herself with a shock diagnosis throwing her into the unfamiliar and at times frightening world of hospitals and eye radiation treatment. As all good storytellers would, Alice weaves this experience into an intriguing story interspersing this experience along with the people she encounters with the more mythic tale of Odin who gives up one eye in exchange for knowledge. As she tells it the people she encounters become part of her own mythic journey, as she overcomes her fear, with the help of the unexpected allies she meets along the way.