Amongst the fairies, giants, witches and trolls, kings and queens, princes and princesses, there is one figure in particular who skulks through and across the fairytale world and haunts our imaginations: the wolf. The Wolf is consummately disagreeable; his aspect is base and savage, his voice dreadful, his odour insupportable, his disposition perverse, his manners ferocious; [he is] odious and destructive. Comte de Buffon (Leclerc, 1817, p. 403) Fairy tales, like all forms of stories, are the product of human imagining and witnessing, warnings from the experienced about the treacherous world we live in. It is no surprise, then, that the reputation the wolf has earned itself should stem from a history of human-beast relations. Garry Marvin explains that it was a mere few centuries ago in Europe that ‘the carnivorous ways of wolves entered into human concerns’ (2012, p. 8). In settlements where humans depended on livestock for their survival, the wolf became an all-encompassing synecdoche for the untamed, the savage and the wild, that which crept into human civilisation and devastated its very sources of survival. But this reputation seems rather literal against the other types of beasts that roam the fairytale world – the trolls and the giants to name a few. It seems strange to consider that the anthropomorphised fairytale wolf, conniving and cruel, should still today represent solely this wolf's threat to livestock of the distant past. Garry Marvin contends that it is impossible to write about the histories of ‘wolves themselves, wolf being, or wolf behaviour’ (2010, p. 65). We can only comment on ‘social histories of the intertwinings of wolf and human lives’, and, in doing so, ‘the wolves are likely to remain general’ (ibid.). It is certain that through such generalisations the figure of the wolf became something much more ferocious, terrifying and unpredictable than a mere sheep-burglar, and that other human concerns, emanating not just from the literal wild of the wilderness but from other developing concepts of the savage, hideous or beastly, became infused with its character. This stance is shared by Lucyan David Mech (WildlifeSociety, 2010) who notes, Before the first scientific field studies of wolves, which did not begin until the early decades of the twentieth century, the natural history of the wolf was little known. What was known, or imagined, about it came largely from local traditional knowledge or through its representations in fables, folklore, travellers’ tales and other popular stories. In this essay, I aim to demonstrate three ways the image of a once-menacing predator, the wolf, has developed over time through our literature to be emblematic of other human concepts of predations, evils, and threats. In examining the representation of the wolf in fairy tales, I will posit that the image of the wolf, once signifying only a literal threat to the basic needs and properties of humans for their survival, has now also come to typify malicious threats to human culture, spirituality, purity and tradition. To do so, I will study the fairytale wolf through three main critical lenses – wolf as menace, wolf as demon, and wolf as gender-confused sexual predator – and I will refer to the following texts: ‘The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids’ [‘The Little Kids’ in this essay, for brevity] by Brothers Grimm (2013); ‘The Story of the Three Little Pigs’ [‘The Three Little Pigs’] by Joseph Jacobs (2002); and, finally, two versions of ‘Red Riding Hood’: ‘Little Red-Cap’ by Brothers Grimm (2013), and ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ by Charles Perrault (1697). Wolf as Menace Joyce Thomas writes that in the fairytale world, ‘the natural world is humanised and animals act like masquerading, costumed people’ (1989, p. 105). This provides an interesting theoretical framework when considering the notion of the wolf as menace in the fairy tale, 'The Little Kids'. In this story, the mother goat is described to have ‘loved [her kids] with all the love of a mother for her children’ (Grimm, 2013, p. 19). She has ‘a soft, pleasant voice’ and ‘wept over her poor children’ when they were eaten (p. 20). We see here that the mother goat is humanised and thus so are her children. This invokes a certain sense of relatability in the readers. They feel as though they can understand and relate to mother goat's pain, with her character reflecting aspects of human personality, thought and feeling. But, more importantly, it thus makes her vulnerability and victimisation all the closer to home for human readers. However, Thomas also provides a less superficial reading, reminding us that goats, in reality, are domesticated animals. She adds, ‘the multiplied protagonist stands as an accurate representation of reality: of the domesticated animal’s common herds and, by extension, of civilisation’s collective community’ (p. 109). This frames the wolf as an incessant, destructive threat both to the livestocks of people and to human civilisation in general – ‘One after the other, he swallowed them down his throat’ (‘WSLK’, Grimm, 2013, p. 20). The wolf’s return to sleep under a tree after devouring the kids accentuates that he is not part of this ‘human’ civilisation – the tree being, of course, representative of nature, of the wild. In essence, then, the wolf is something that comes from the wild, savagely destroys the civil and the tame, and then returns to whence it came. This representation is not only limited to livestock, however, but to other human resources as well. The wolf utilises various properties belonging to humans to deceive the kids: chalk to soften his voice, dough and white meal to whiten his feet…and all of this is to appear more like the kids’ mother to deceive them. And this process of destroying human properties is not limited to this tale alone. In ‘The Three Little Pigs’ (Jacobs, 2002), the wolf blows down two of the pigs’ houses – notably, those which they have made with the help of generous human men. As Susan J Pearson and Mary Weismantel (2010) explain, pigs have had a ‘unique economic role in community’ in the West (p. 23); ‘they sustain the living with meat [and] demonstrate the wealth and status of ambitious families’ (p. 24). So, the wolf’s attack on these is a direct attack on our sustenance and economy as well as on our architecture. The threats the wolf makes towards humans continue throughout fairy tales to become increasingly more direct: in both versions of ‘Red Riding Hood’ (Grimm, 2013; Perrault, 1697), the wolf is a literal ‘animal antagonist pitted against a human protagonist’ (Shipman, 2014, p. 16), who also enters a human’s (Grandma’s) house and steals her clothes, all to deceive the unsuspecting child. Again, we see the wolf making use of our property to deceive, devour and destroy. Garry Marvin reminds us of the global past and continuous extirpations of wolves from human civilisations, noting that after preying on livestock, ‘[wolves] became pests whose presence could not be tolerated’ (2012, p. 103). Such a resilient counter-attack is definitely represented in ‘The Little Kids’. The good-hearted mother – again, representative of a human –– reclaims the use of human resources and uses them against the wolf, ultimately leading to his demise: she first cuts open his stomach with a pair of scissors and frees her children. After filling it with stones, she then stitches it back up with needle and thread. When the wolf then heads to the well – yet another manmade object – to quench his thirst, he is weighted by the stones and drowns. This is also the case in Jacobs’s ‘The Three Little Pigs’ (2002) where the surviving pig boils the wolf alive in a pot full of water. Garry Marvin also reminds us that wolf skins have been viewed as a ‘valuable commodity’ for many years and that wolves ‘were killed in large numbers […] because there was a market for their fur’ (2012, p. 98). This commodification of the wolf’s fur is clear in Charles Perrault’s ‘Little Red Riding Hood’, where the tale ends with the huntsman who ‘drew off the wolf’s skin and went home with it’ (1967, in: Lang, 1889, p. 53). In commodifying the dead body of the wolf, human resource, civilisation and economy win, and the threat of the wild is extinguished. Wolf as Demon With the figure of the wolf signifying menace and predation, it is not surprising that, over time, it became to signify other forms of predation that became more intrinsic to human concern once the threat of the wild had become better handled. In this section, I will demonstrate that developing religious communities, concerned with concepts of deception, evil and sin, found the character of the fairytale wolf the perfect site for their depictions. Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Matthew 7:15 (Holy Bible) In Matthew 7:20 (Holy Bible), Jesus tells his disciples that they can tell false prophets apart by the fruits they bring. This provides an interesting reading of Jacobs’s ‘The Three Little Pigs’ (2002) and Brothers Grimm’s ‘Little Red-Cap’ (2013). In the former, the wolf attempts to entice the final pig out of his house by explaining that there is an apple-tree they can visit together to get some apples. Not only does this correlate with 7:20 but it also echoes the biblical story of Adam and Eve wherein Eve is tempted by the snake to eat the apple from the forbidden Tree of Knowledge (Genesis 3, Holy Bible). Then, in Brothers Grimm’s ‘Little Red-Cap’ (2013), the wolf acts similarly to the biblical snake, tempting her deeper into the forest with less literal, more symbolic ‘fruits’: ‘flowers’ (p. 98) and ‘singing birds’ (p. 99). Not only does the wolf play the role of a false prophet, luring people into his desires, but he is also a committer of sin. Leviticus 11:7 (Holy Bible) states that swine is unclean for consumption. In eating the first two pigs and yearning to eat the third, the wolf is a direct embodiment of acts against God’s will. A deeper and perhaps more interesting reading of the wolf as demon surfaces when we consider English and Indo-European society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which Russel Zguta (1977) describes as characterised in part by the ’witch craze’ (p. 220). This phenomenon saw citizens accused of witchcraft, trialled and, if found guilty, tortured and killed. Zguta writes, ‘In England and the East Slavic world, the usual preliminary test for witchcraft was the ordeal by water’ (ibid.). In this test, suspected witches had their feet tied with stones and were thrown into bodies of water – water being considered as ‘holy’ and ‘purifying’. This provides a historical and cultural reading of the wolf whose stomach is filled with stones in both Brothers Grimm’s ‘Little Red-Cap’ and ‘The Little Kids’ (2013), and who is drowned in both of these tales as well as in Jacobs’s ‘The Three Little Pigs’ (2002). Here, the other characters, innocent and meek, are saved from the demonic wolf, drowning him in the ‘holiness’ of water. Similarly to the sixteenth/seventeenth-century witch, we could also read the wolf as possessed by a demon. One feature of demonic possession, as viewed by the Roman Catholic Church, is voice changing, for, in the Holy Bible, demons can be seen speaking through people to Jesus (Matthew 8:29, 8:31; Mark 5:7, 5:9). In both versions of ‘Red Riding Hood’ (Grimm, 2013; Perrault, 1697), the wolf changes his voice to deceive the grandmother in pretending that he is Red Riding Hood, and vice versa. The same pattern of behaviour is noticeable in Brothers Grimm’s ‘The Little Kids’ (2013) where, as mentioned before, he uses chalk to disguise his voice and deceive the kids. Wolf as Gender-Confused Sexual Predator Western society has seen a rise in gender studies, queer studies and feminism, all critiquing its own patriarchal, heteronormative and misogynistic ways. But how does the image of the wolf fare amongst this? Children, especially attractive, well bred [sic] young ladies, should never talk to strangers, for if they should do so, they may well provide dinner for a wolf. Charles Perrault (1697, in: Lang, 1889, p. 53) This quote is a moral added at the end of Perrault’s ‘Little Red Riding Hood’, making it less of a magical fiction for children and more of a didactic and instructional narrative laden with moral teaching. In turn, the moral transforms the wolf’s image from pursuit predator into sexual predator. The ‘red’ of Red Riding Hood’s cape can be seen as provocative, symbolic of lust, sex, seduction, violence, but it is also a vibrant, attractive target, like a red rag to a bull. Influenced by Perrault’s version, Grimm’s ‘Little Red-Cap’ (Grimm, 2013), sees the wolf tempting Red Riding Hood ‘off the path’ (p. 98) – here, not just a physical but a moral path – and deeper into the forest which thus serves as a realm of debauchery, danger: ‘See, Little Red-Cap, how pretty the flowers are about here – why do you not look round?’ (p. 98-99). Moreover, as Andrea Frownfelter (2010) points out, flowers have long signified female genitalia, meaning that this could be interpreted as the wolf tempting Red Riding Hood to lose her virginity. Brothers Grimm write, ‘When she had gathered so many that she could carry no more, she remembered her grandmother, and set out on her way’ (2013, p. 99). Here, her grandmother represents her moral duties which she forgets whilst giving in to her sexual urges. This perhaps gives an unnerving reading of the famous “What big [body parts] you have!” which could imply Red Riding Hood’s excitement over the burly and prepossessing male wolf. The ‘wolf as sexual predator’ becomes more harrowing when we consider the following statistic by Darkness to Light, a non-profit organisation to inform parents on sexual abuse: ‘More than 80% of child sexual abuse incidents occur when children are in isolated, one-on-one situations with adults or other youth’ (2017, p. 1). The wolf has the perfect advantage, then, and he seems to have been successful in his act, noting that eventually, Red Riding Hood ‘took off her clothes and got into bed’ with him on his request (Lang, 1889, p. 52). Another reading of the wolf derives from a psychoanalytical approach. Erich Fromm (2013) postulates that the wolf’s greed is not gluttony but greed for power and that after deceiving both the grandmother and Red Riding Hood, the wolf becomes the most powerful and superior character. This is evoked in the wolf’s competitiveness as he challenges Red Riding Hood to a race to grandma’s house: ‘We shall see who will be there first’ (Perrault, 1697, in: Lang, 1889, p. 51). However, Fromm argues that there is one power which, as a male, he cannot possess: a state of pregnancy. He argues, ‘[The wolf] attempted to play the role of a pregnant woman, having living beings in his belly’ (2013, p. 240). He calls this the wolf’s ‘pregnancy envy’ (p. 233). These live beings being cut out of the wolf’s stomach with scissors emulates a Caesarean. However, they are soon replaced by stones, and this is something that should not be overlooked, for stones are a symbol of sterility. These stones then fall on him and ultimately kill him, making his pursuit of ‘ultimate power’ laughable and fatal. This same pregnancy envy is evoked in ‘The Little Kids’ (Grimm, 2013) when the mother goat reclaims her feminine title as the mother of her kids, freeing them before filling his stomach with stones in the same way. An extension of this recognises the wolf as “gender-confused”, changing his voice to pretend to be Red Riding Hood and her grandmother as well as the mother goat in ‘The Three Kids’ (Grimm, 2013). Psychologist Anne M Vitale writes, ‘Excessive guilt and misplaced shame are what therapists typically find when working with individuals struggling with gender identity issues’ (2010, p. 40). This perhaps explains why the wolf in ‘Little Red-Cap’ ‘drew the curtains’ and hid from Red Riding Hood, pulling the grandmother’s cap ‘far over [his] face’ (Grimm, 2013, p. 99). Perhaps his urgency to get to grandma’s house in ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ (Perrault, 1697), and his choice to dress as a human (of the opposite sex), is due to a deeply felt need to deny his biological nature and re-establish his identity. He could have simply eaten Red Riding Hood without the theatricality, but this was a decisive plot. This characterises his villainy in one of two ways: either this is a transgressive act, challenging the norms of patriarchal and heteronormative society, and thus an act against authorities; or it is the disruption of these accepted and celebrated norms in order to confuse, scare and deceive. Either way, the gender norms of Western society are certainly compromised by his transvestism. Conclusion In conclusion, human concerns of the West about the safety of the mind and body of the human, adult and child alike have been naturally imbibed by our literature. In turn, these concerns have been fictionalised and cemented in the villainous and the beastly of the fairytale world. I have shown how the character of the wolf, demonised throughout the ages as destructive and oppositional, has consistently reinstated, reaffirmed and reinforced human ideologies, norms and moralities, coming to reflect developments in human thinking, from concern with survival to that with religious and sexual purity and welfare. Bibliography Beckett, S. L. (2009) Recycling Red Riding Hood. USA: Taylor & Francis Ltd. Beckettt, S. L. (2013) Revisioning Red Riding Hood Around the World: An Anthology of International Retellings. USA: Wayne State University Press. Darkness to Light (2017) ‘5 Steps to Protecting Our Children’. Available at: https://www.d2l.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/5-Steps-to-Protecting-Our-Kids-2017.pdf (Accessed 2 January 2019). Fromm, E. (2013) The Forgotten Language: An Introduction to the Understanding of Dreams, Fairy Tales, and Myths. New York City: Open Road Media. Frownfelter, A. (2010) ‘Flower Symbolism as Female Sexual Metaphor’, Senior Honours Theses, 238, Eastern Michigan University. Available at: https://commons.emich.edu/ cgi/view content.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article= 1210&context=honors (Accessed: 1 January 2019). Genesis 3, Holy Bible: King James Version. Grimm, J. & Grimm, W. (2013) ‘Little Red-Cap’, The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales. New York: Race Point Publishing, pp. 98-100. Grimm, J. & Grimm, W. (2013) ‘The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids’, The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales. New York: Race Point Publishing, pp. 19-21. Jacobs, J. (2002) ‘The Story of the Three Little Pigs’, English Fairy Tales. And, More English Fairy Tales. California, Colorado and England: ABC-CLIO, pp. 58-61. Leclerc, G. L., Comte de Buffon (1817) A Natural History, General and Particular: Containing the History and Theory of the Earth, a General History of Man, the Brute Creation, Vegetables, Minerals, Etc. Etc. Translated by William Smellie. Cambridge: Richard Evans. Levack, B. P. (2014) ‘The Horrors of Witchcraft and Demonic Possession’, Social Research: An International Quarterly, 81(4), pp. 921-939. Leviticus 11, Holy Bible: King James Version. Mark 5, Holy Bible: King James Version. Marvin, G. (2010) ‘Wolves in Sheep’s (and Others’) Clothing’, in Brantz, D. (ed.) Beastly Natures: Animals, Humans, and the Study of History. Charlottesville & London: University of Virginia Press, pp. 59-78. Marvin, G. (2012) Wolf. London: Reaktion Books. Matthew 7, Holy Bible: King James Version. Matthew 8, Holy Bible: King James Version. Orme, J. (2015) ‘A Wolf’s Queer Invitation: David Kaplan’s Little Red Riding Hodd and Queer Possibility’, Marvels & Tales, 29(1), pp. 87-109. Pearson, S. J. & Weismantel, M. (2010), in Brantz, D. (ed.) Beastly Natures: Animals, Humans, and the Study of History. Charlottesville & London: University of Virginia Press, pp. 17-37. Perrault, C. (1697) ‘Little Red Riding Hood’, in Lang, A. (1889) The Blue Fairy Book. Translated by Andrew Lang. London: Longmans, Green & Company, pp. 51-53. Shipman, D. R. (2014) ‘Girl Meets Wolf: Little Red Riding Hood, Adaptation, and the Art of Storytelling’, Student Project for Master of Arts, Graduate School of Duke University. Available at: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.884.6995& rep =rep1&type=pdf (Accessed: 2 January 2019). Stevens, J. (2005) ‘Pregnancy Envy and the Politics of Compensatory Masculinities’, Politics Gender, 1(2), pp. 265-296. Thomas, J. (1989) Inside the Wolf’s Belly: Aspects of the Fairy Tale. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Vitale, Anne M. (2010) The Gendered Self Further Commentary on the Transsexual Phenomenon. Canada: Flyfisher Press. WildlifeSociety (2010) Dr. L. David Mech Wolf Lecture. Available at: https://www.youtube.com /watch?v=2KhrX58pQNI (Accessed: 29 December 2018). Zguta, R. (1977) ‘The Ordeal by Water (Swimming of Witches) in the East Slavic World’, Slavic Review, 36(2), pp. 220-230.

This review considers The Duration, a play written by Bruce Graham, directed by Jelena Budimir and staged at the Omnibus Theatre. I would like to start by commending the cast on their marvellous acting, particularly Florence Roberts (playing Emma) and Sarah Finigan (playing Audrey). All actors demonstrated excellent credibility, conviction and vitality and portrayed characters with palpable naturalism. Energy was also kept well and constant. My only strong recommendation would be to pay more attention to moments of silence, particularly where one character is listening and reacting to another character speaking. These reactions were oftentimes slightly too dramatic and rehearsed, and, other times, almost non-existent. Naturalism was even present in the set (designed by Sarah Jane Booth) as well, with the fully stocked cupboards, the hot steam rising from the teas, the complete newspapers, the regularly emptied cat food bowls, and more. Attention to detail certainly was not amiss in this performance, then. Whilst I believe that a few more were needed, just for that extraneous amount of distinction, costume (also designed by Booth) changes also added well to this sense of naturalism. Needless to elucidate, these elements were well conceived and well designed, making the world of the play all the more precise, attractive and, most importantly, illusory. The lack of naturalism that we must ignore in imagining that a cat is present on stage does require a certain suspension of disbelief that is always awkward to achieve in theatre, but this is to be expected. But whilst this issue is further intensified by the sheer persistence of the ‘characters’ of the cats and their symbolism, Finigan performs her interactions with these imagined creatures very convincingly. Even the attention to detail Finigan demonstrates in keeping the lid of the cardboard box left propped up so that the contents — or lack thereof — of the box should be concealed is simply wonderful to see. I commend Finigan, and perhaps Budimir too, for this precision. Whilst on this topic, I should probably also quickly comment on the writing itself here: the inclusion of a cat is most promising in enabling an audience to develop feeling, compassion and, above all, a bond with Audrey, seeing how she helps and interacts with the innocent, desperate and vulnerable strays. Additionally, it does also make us question Audrey's true intents when she makes her later reappearance with her usual cat bowl in hand…and a gun – although, I am not too sure if this amounted to much in the end, in considering the lack of doubt we are made to feel throughout the rest of the text. A weak equivalent of a jump scare, perhaps. Nevertheless, this is a good opportunity for an audience to re-evaluate what they know of Audrey –– which is, efficaciously, very little. However, symbolic as elements like the cat and the gun may be, or however promising actor credibility and set design are, the writing remains…problematic in places. Islamophobia remains rife not only in America, where this play is set, but most certainly in this country. Media representations of Islam and Muslims, and the terrorism far-too-often associated exclusively with these, along with their sensationalist fear-mongering, have been unignorably prevalent and damaging for decades now, as well. The context and material that the performance presents and examines, then, is most certainly relevant, topical and poignant. However, the manner in which this performance presents its politics is simply…taxing. Islamophobia is a theme that arises only minutely in the beginning of the performance, very suddenly becoming monumental in the middle-end. In the beginning, the theme exists very little, to make room for a feeble sense of drama and intrigue as the secrets surrounding Eddie’s death and the reasoning behind Audrey absconding to Pennsylvania are left undisclosed. Such a degree of focus is placed on the characters and their circumstances and on Emma’s response to her mother’s abrupt and out-of-character behaviour that the political focus of the play becomes secondary, nay nonexistent. When it is later revealed to be a significant element, however, it quickly comes to comprise the credibility and depth of the characters and the plot that Graham has spent so much time engineering. I consider particularly here the longwinded scene between Douglas (played by Jason Wilson) and Audrey, where it is revealed that Audrey left for Pennsylvania due to the sheer discomfort and fear she had in regard to her own Islamophobia that she could feel brewing inhumanely within her. This scene, in particular, sets a mood for all subsequent scenes henceforward and provides a pivotal shift in focus with the unhindered and strictly defictionalised political voice it delivers. From this scene on, we often lose sight of the characters themselves whose identities seem to be dulled or diminished at times, in favour of the voicing of political opinions. The characters – in this scene especially, I must emphasise – seem to function as mere mouthpieces for the sociopolitical undertones and messages of the text; they simply argue back and forth, their personalities and idiosyncrasies often forgotten to the rather sterile and incessant political outbursts. Whilst the politics of the text are important, in plays like this, in order to achieve maximum effect, political content should be interwoven seamlessly into the narrative; it should seem educational and enlightening yet clever and insidious. Watching two actors [NB the word ‘actors’ and not ‘characters’ here] rant at each other for over ten minutes is likely to alienate or, worse, bore audiences into disengagement from the performance and thus from the politics the performance aims to teach. This can only be far from didactic, and I am afraid that this effect of weariness/alienation was certainly produced on the night I saw the performance. Unfortunately, I must say very bluntly that this scene simply bored me, and so I took the time to turn my attention to the audience. Whilst it is, of course, impossible for me to describe the response of any given audience of any performance with complete and incontestable certainty, I am surely still able to describe what I saw and its implication. Exempting myself and the ushers, there were exactly twenty-four audience members. Exactly thirteen, just over half, of these were either falling asleep or completely disengaged, staring off elsewhere or at their feet, or rolling their eyes and sighing with visible discontentment or ennui. Furthermore, to my surprise, upon leaving, I overheard the two audience members whom I believed to be the most engaged throughout share an exchange: “Well, you fell asleep, didn’t you?” “It was just that [sic] bit dragged.” I can only imagine that this was the very scene to which they were referring. I was not alone in my boredom, then. This is so unfortunate, because, as I said, the performers were certainly incredibly energised and credible – perhaps I shall go as far as to say the best collectively I have seen in a very long time – but the writing is simply far too heavy and unforgiving in areas like this to warrant full audience attention. I must also mention the fact that the character of Emma assumes the role of social justice warrior against the ill-treatment of Muslims whilst hypocritically denigrating and prejudging the homeless. Furthermore, Audrey’s hysteria and fixation upon the happenings aboard one of the 9/11 planes also seem somewhat unrealistic. That someone [Audrey] who finds herself feeling so strongly against Muslims that they intend on smashing one of them over the head with a teacup, who regrets it and then runs away from herself to hide in the comforts and security of isolation, someone who feels such profound and perturbing shame and fear of oneself, would be someone who then spends hours and hours, days upon days obsessing over the events of the attack…it seems too extreme. And this is without mentioning that this is someone who, despite acting upon out-of-character whims, is mentally very sound and calm, analytical and intelligent. It seems as though the fact that Audrey is an academic, a historian with a propensity towards critical thinking and analysis, is perhaps stretched too far here, with Audrey going so far as to reconstruct what may have happened during her son's flight. These actions just do not coincide with a woman well practised in unbiased and impersonal critical analysis. With many a seemingly minute but actually rather destructive inconsistency like this, any sense of character identity and belonging becomes completely compromised and refutable. Whilst I have noted that this scene, along with a few subsequent scenes, was rather boring, I must stress that actors dealt with pacing very well, in fact. I think the issue is solely with the writing itself. Graham sometimes fails to consider realistic fluidity of speech, with registers remaining inconsistent and with exchanges being reduced to a mere back-and-forth of emotionless and factual statements as opposed to exclamations or expressions with conviction, palpable belief and feeling – I should note here that this is not to imply that there should be a dramatic element to the delivery of every single line, but emotion should always be distinct and perceptible, intermingled with a character's judgement and thus their wording. I think in this scene, in particular, Graham was trying to create that sense of intrigue in the slow and cautious revelation of Audrey’s secret [her reason for running away]. This was not effective. Audrey's reluctance in revealing to us the reasons behind her Islamophobia quickly becomes overplayed and thus an annoyance. On the topic of pacing, I should note quickly the incredibly pointless scene change wherein newspapers are cleared from the floor, the chair is reorganised, and for what? Only so that Roberts can sit elsewhere on the stage, away from the now-clean area, to perform a monologue in a spotlight alone before the end of the play? Pointless. The clutter should be left alone both to conserve time and to serve as a symbolic reference to Audrey’s hysteria. Furthermore, Wilson should not appear as a stagehand during transitions! Transitions are destructive to illusion enough alone. One final note: the utility knife – don’t actually use a functional, sharp and dangerous knife in a performance! Especially in a scene wherein a stunt of two characters wrestling each other takes place! Fake knives for theatres are cheap props that are easy to locate. Use these, instead. But perhaps this is more a health and safety-crazed outburst of mine than a critique on the artistry here. Back to the writing. All things considered, this is a very good dramatic text, overall. A little hard to swallow due to its will to overload its audience with unadulterated and unrefined information, but one which takes good time to develop characters and their stories. It does have its fair share of symbolism, too, which is most effective and pleasing. I must stress that the concept itself is polished, and the performance, as it stands, is as good as it can be, coming from the dramatic text. Even lighting (designed by Andrew Caddies) and sound (designed by Joe Dines) were well-designed and facilitative, with the former being simple yet sufficient and evocative, and the latter creeping seamlessly into the space and working the emotive material out of the page. But one can only do so much with a dramatic text that is flawed to some degree. If changes cannot or will not be made, I can only recommend more visual appeal, that the performers work with the director closely to identify moments that are far too still or stagnant and find a way to energise them –– I could imagine, for instance, Audrey reintroducing the kittens, feeding them; making a cup of tea, avoiding eye contact with Douglas; anything to make these scenes feel busier, as opposed to just having the performers generally still, their expression limited to the face and the voice. A few final notes. First, a slighter and rather awkward but very important point: I must recommend that Roberts work on how she holds her mouth when delivering lines whilst eating. With eating and talking becoming more and more consistent as the play progresses, Roberts spat far too frequently and far too much, and this was sometimes in the audience’s direction. Again, an awkward one to note but important, nevertheless. A performer must be aware of their entire body and how it is being controlled and held, and the mouth is no exception. As soon as a performer spits, an audience will instantly be taken out of the world of the play and be aware of the physical reality of the space, of the abject spittle and morsels of food that may be projected at them. This is distracting, off-putting and subtractive. My very final note considers a directorial issue: the manner in which the audience is addressed. The choice to have Roberts perform to an audience member as though she were the infamous ‘Monique’ from what I shall refer to as Emma’s group therapy sessions is simply awkward, distracting and, above all, needless. Roberts has not addressed an audience member as Monique yet at all, and so to do so now seems completely incongruent and overdramatic. That she should even just sit in the audience in this scene, too, is most unnecessary and weakens the impact of the material of the scene. I understand that this was most likely done to directly accuse the audience of Islamophobia or their compliance with it, to attack them intimately, to force them to introspection, to reflect, to question themselves; this is not the case. It is simply awkward and disillusioning. The action played right in front of the audience Downstage, by the 'porch', was also unnecessary and subtractive, particularly in an early scene where Finigan stands off in the corner, far Downstage Left, hidden out of sight from the stage-left audience and obtrusive to the audience Downstage. Being in such close proximity with the audience invites them to feel as though they are physically trespassing upon a heavily fictionalised world from they have already been forcibly distanced, and this leads to a sense of destabilisation where the audience member becomes acutely aware of their position and role within the performance, no longer lost in the illusory world of the play but focused only on themselves. This is unwanted. It is because of moments like this that are completely catastrophic, shattering the world created by the performers and their portrayals of rather well-imagined and solid characters, and because of the similar effects produced by the indecisive writing and its struggles to maintain a consistent voice, that I give this performance the rating that I do. “A well-staged and engaging play but suffering from faltering momentum and inconsistencies.”

I shall start by clarifying that this review is incomplete, to a certain degree, in that I was unable to see all of the texts included in the full collection of Mummylogues. This was due to a few cast members falling ill and being unable to attend. Now, on to the review. Writing, on the whole, is adequate and thought-provoking, if a little predictable, touching upon very relevant and palpable fears and sentiments that many mothers certainly experience, covering post-natal depression, IVF, abortions, miscarriages, even the death of one’s child, and more. The content is certainly sufficiently extensive, then. I mentioned predictability, and there certainly appears to be a sense of repetition in subject matter across the texts, also — especially, for example, in playwright Hearity’s depiction of men as monolithically football-crazed and, more specifically, obsessed with Liverpool Football Club. This is an issue because it creates a danger of limiting the scope of the texts, unifying the minute details that render characters identifiable and relatable to such a degree that they are at risk of seeming far too indistinct, univocal and shallow. The extent of this issue is notably minimised, however, by the collection’s aforementioned content coverage. I have an issue with the majority of the content of ‘Just Aretha’, written and directed by Victoria Evaristo and performed by Aretha Nortey, and ‘It’s Not Me, It’s You’, written and directed by Nieve Hearity and performed, on the night I saw the performance, by Katie Vowles. The former deals less with motherhood — though this theme is certainly referenced and so not forgotten in the text completely — and more with disability, with an emphatic focus on Nortey’s deformity of the hand. What is more, this is the only text to procure direct audience interaction, with Nortey inviting an audience member to give her a Hi-5, further distancing it from the collection. The latter seems to dwindle away completely from motherhood and towards womanhood, with Vowles’s character interrogating what makes a woman a “good” feminist, and, more significantly, whether she is a “good” one herself. To focus, instead, on what makes a female who is also a mother a “good” feminist would have brought this content closer to the overarching theme and would have been a lot more poignant, I can imagine. One could read into this and state that in focusing so little on the mother aspect of these characters' identities, these seemingly incongruous texts force audiences to remember that mothers are also complex persons themselves with their own, independent and particularised identities, not merely “just” mothers. One could say that these texts remind us to view these mothers as feeling people who experience the world independently to their offspring, and not only the bearers and guardians of children. However, I do not believe that this is what these specific texts succeed to do, as inviting an angle this would be. Both texts, particularly the former, are strong in themselves but have little place in this collection that, overall, certainly presents the personal experiences of its characters but solely their experiences as mothers and nothing more. On to acting. Naturalism is a huge issue in this performance. The actresses struggle, it seems, to move fluidly between the delivery of one emotion to that of another, and we seem to move through the texts rather staggeringly because of this, with acute and blatant awareness of the events, issues and climaxes that propel the narratives along [where this should feel almost seamless, subtle and undetected]. Whilst performers certainly demonstrate good conviction and energy throughout, credibility makes for the best audience experience in performances like this, and this was certainly lacking. It is the credibility of the writing itself, constant throughout, that allows us to ignore the credibility of the performers, I believe. However, as I said, energy and vitality were certainly not amiss. Transformativity is also in danger of being non-existent across the performers, with Hearity and Vowles certainly shining through as the most versatile — emphasis on the former. There is also a huge, and distracting, range in non-verbal interaction across the performers. To exemplify, in ‘Congratulions’, written, directed and performed by Hearity, Hearity stands in very close proximity to the audience, making sure to give eye contact to every single audience member, as does Eden Vansittart in ‘The A Word’, written and directed by Shereen Rousbaiani; conversely, we then have Victoria Evaristo who, in both ‘Dignified’ and ‘Dog Mum’, both written by Hearity and directed by Evaristo herself, chooses one spot above the centre of the audience and performs to it rigidly, restricted to one area Upstage. How the audience are addressed and included in the texts should be consistent across a collection like this. Moreover, I believe it was a mistake to have Evaristo direct her own performance; having an additional director who can see the action from an audience’s perspective would have perhaps made Evaristo’s characterisations [or lack thereof, unfortunately] and performances more multifaceted and distinct. Rehearsing in front of a mirror is also something I would recommend to actors/performers working alone. Overall, this is a great overview of and introduction to motherhood and the experiences of present, prospective and former mothers. It is particularly effective that the texts all focus on the mother as a feeling individual and her distinct and subjective experiences, as opposed to on the sterile chronology of child-rearing or on the physical experiences of child labour alone. Performers are clearly dedicated and energised, and material is engaging and inviting. A good performance. “A good performance providing adequate insight into the experiences of mothers and mothers-to-be.”

This performance is part of the Clapham Fringe. To book your tickets for any of the Fringe events, click here. Unfortunately, my responses to this performance are almost entirely negative. This is a very confused and faltering dramatic text whose executions fall incredibly far from its aims. The performance professes itself to be an exploration into attachment through the whimsical theme of childhood and child’s play. It simply is not. My methodology is to appreciate that a performance will speak for itself before I do any external reading to work out what the performance was supposed to achieve, and I can say emphatically that I would have been blissfully unaware, had I not read the play’s description afterwards, that this was an exploration into attachment as opposed to a confused demonstration of items, games and experiences oft-associated with a so-called ‘western’ childhood. Exploring childhood will automatically remind an observer of attachments or lacks thereof. Games, clothing, phrases and TV shows from childhood do naturally produce a positive or negative response in the observer by mere association, and this response is certainly made possible by the material presented in this performance. However, one would expect an instrumentalisation of this response, a response that we could only loosely label as an ‘attachment’. We would expect further investigation into this response and others like it; that it would be explained, challenged explored. Instead, it is merely produced and forgotten as we move swiftly on to the next topic. So, what is the purpose of presenting this material if not to use it as a critical lens through which to view attachment and explore it further? The focus of this dramatic text remains exclusively on childhood and children’s experiences to which we, a ‘western’ audience, can relate. And I would not refer to this as an exploration of childhood, either. It is but a fictionalised demonstration, a re-presentation aiming to depict, typify and reflect our childhoods back at us. We learn nothing, challenge nothing, analyse nothing, and, most of all, we explore nothing. From very early on in this performance, it becomes obvious that the creatives are unclear as to the purpose and effects of the content they are presenting, cramming into the dramatic text anything loosely related to childhood that they can think of. And this drastically affects the performance’s style and mode. This performance cannot decide whether it is a play with a plot and overarching narrative, seeing a group of adults relive their memories growing up in a children’s home by entering through a nondescript — and quickly forgotten — magical portal; or a performance favouring a figurative re-presentation of childhood and the items, experiences and games we associate with it above fictional storytelling and a coherent narrative. Both, alone, are effective and viable in theory but cannot operate alongside one another without some sense of disparity and disjointedness. As a result of this, the creatives must decide whether this is a character-based play determined to absorb its audience into its fiction and invoke in them along their reflective journey a sense of nostalgia and delight, and perhaps a bittersweet mourning; or an actor-based performance that remains defictionalised and aims to present an analytical and explorative study complete with academic integrity. Again, you cannot have both. In the description of their work, Runt of the Litter, the theatre company who created this performance, state incredibly vaguely — I imagine because they are not certain themselves — that they wish to explore 'attachment in its many forms’. I have to consider, then, which “forms” of attachment are we presented? Only twice is the word ‘attachment’ actually used in this performance and both times by a seemingly random seamstress who appears to us via projected footage [more on projections later]. She explains what ‘attachment’ signifies to her in her line of work: the attachment of buttons and pieces to fabrics, feet and attachments to sewing machines, etc. This is the only distinctive variation of “attachment” with which we are presented, and it is completely and emphatically unrelated to any of the performance’s content. This footage, which, frankly, should be removed, has nothing to do with the performance and in no way supports the performance’s investigation, only dampens and confuses it. We are not even told who this lady is or given any information to deduce her identity ourselves, and so the choice to include her in this performance is simply confounding. It is also clear that this was either completely unrehearsed or rehearsed very little, with the lady clearly addressing the camera impromptu. This is a piece of documentary theatre, which would perhaps benefit the performance if it was, in fact, an extensive explorative study, but, as we have already established several times, it is not. So, now we have a character-based, fictional play with no coherent narrative dealing with re-presentations and ‘real’ recorded interviews. Utterly confounding. The creatives clearly have not thought through what effect this would have on the overall voice of the dramatic text. Later, though, we see her again, and she finally defines — but, again, vaguely — the attachment we would expect from this text. But this definition is something we would expect to receive early on in the performance, to frame our critical thinking, not right towards the end. Moving on, we have the issue of the monologues. Reminding ourselves that attachment is the focus of investigation here, we are presented a monologue dealing with recurring dreams and another with being true to your authentic self…on topic, then! I must admit that the other two monologues are slightly more pertinent, though, with emphasis on Sadie’s (Hannah Magee) in which she speaks of a specific painting that enchanted and gave her comfort as a child. Her lack of parental figures and guidance also play into the theme, somewhat. However, again, this remains unfocused and starts to deal with Sadie’s sense of abandonment and lack of belonging, not attachment. And whilst Warren (Jay Pooley) speaks of his relationship and bond with his sister, the focus is turned to his guilt for not being a better brother, his sense of selfishness, and his own lack of belonging. So, these two monologues, the only two silver linings to bring us back to our focus on attachment…take us somewhere else. This is a shame because these four monologues could be used so much more effectively; they could refocus the material, elucidating the action we have seen thus far and framing the information to come, so that we might learn something, experience something, explore something with an overarching sense that the material we are experiencing is cogent, cohesive and coherent. They could be used to highlight explicitly how attachment is present in all of the examples the material provides and to show how significant attachment is and its many forms — exactly what the performance aims to do. To rely on ‘traditional’ understandings of plot and character in Sadie and Warren’s monologues is just too subtractive. Whilst I do not believe the subject matter of Frankie’s (Abbie Aldridge) monologue is pertinent to or useful for this text in any way, I would recommend that the creatives re-study its style of address, how its writer succeeds in communicating their message through a first-person voice but without further fictionalising the content through any references to how Frankie’s tale relates back to the overall plot. The manner in which the audience is addressed and in which the figure [not character] of Frankie references herself should be a notable area of study for Runt of the Litter. But again: rethink the material! This is by far the most convoluted and faltering monologue of the four; its message takes far too long to communicate and is done so weakly and ramblingly. Overall, in terms of writing and form, I find the monologues lend to a rather predictable and monotonous structure: unrestrained and lively activity, then a soliloquy, then activity, then…and so on. As I have written above, they also fictionalise the text too heavily, with needless and ineffective references to the infamous Carol’s children’s home and the relationships between the characters, references that do not progress the narrative or further our understanding of the character and plot. Now that I have established the instability and ineptitude of the dramatic text, its areas of ‘study’ and its ‘messages’, I shall now move on to the capabilities of the performers themselves. I shall start with some positives! By far the most natural performer is Eleanor Kumar (playing Jaz) who is clear on her character intents and actions and certainly has good stage presence. When energy and vitality are required from the performers, they certainly do not disappoint. Despite the first song sequence being far too drawn-out, scenes depicting fast and energised play are handed well, also. Now, the negatives… One notices rather quickly as a regular theatregoer that stage presence is, of course, defined by the articulacy, expressivity and stature of a performer’s body but that perhaps the most important factor, second to facial expression, is how the hands are held and utilised. Manual expression is incredibly important and a huge part of everyday non-verbal communication. Yet, all of these cast members struggle repeatedly with what to do with their hands –– except Aldridge, in fact; she struggles throughout the entire performance. They usually end up located by the thighs, stiff and still. This is most distracting and unnatural and must be examined. The next biggest issue I have with performativity has to do with the performers’ collective interactions. There are quite a few sequences that require uniformity amongst the performers. For example, when the characters first enter through the portal and perform their secret handshake; or during what I shall call the ‘morning routine’, wherein the performers repeat stylised lateral movements in canon, moving across the stage, miming brushing their teeth, yawning, stretching, etc. I shall say rather bluntly that these are incredibly simple routines but that they are, shockingly, executed terribly. There is a complete lack of synchronisation and physicality which renders movements, particularly in the latter scene, completely illegible and lacklustre. I shall refrain from elaborating, but I should note here, too, that this morning routine is also completely needless and makes for a huge and notable regression in momentum. Expressivity is habitually adequate in this performance, but naturalism is certainly fleeting when it is required of the performers. And a lack of psychological realism when intended is demonstrated through the creatives’ failure to conceive coherent characters and plot when developing a performance that clearly strives to offer these. Moving on to tech. I understand that a technician was sourced last-minute, and so I will not criticise her too harshly for her tech operation, but I must still note that it was highly inadequate. But she was notably unaided by the equally fallible design of technical elements. A sign of an inexperienced theatremaker is an over-reliance upon lighting and a tendency to misuse it by having a different lighting state for every single scene and sequence. This was the case for this performance, and so it is no wonder why Melanie struggled to follow the enormous cue list this would inevitably have presented her with. Projections. Shambolic. Completely failing to supplement the dramatic text in any useful or progressive way, the projector, clearly uncalibrated, provides us with images that are ridiculously small and is impossible, it seems, for the technician to turn on and off remotely, for actors have to scramble to cover the light source with a flimsy piece of card that often falls straight back off. Slides have been set to an automatic timer, it seems, which means that the footage finishes before the performers have succeeded in scrambling to block the light, and that we now get a lovely view of the desktop display of a MacBook once the application has prematurely closed itself. On the night I saw the performance, Magee struggled so much to cover the light, unable to reach it, that she called Kumar back on stage to her rescue — and she also struggled! An utterly ridiculous and terribly disorganised display that slows any momentum we had left and completely annihilates the credibility and integrity of the actors as agents in control of their own performance. I cannot stress enough: get rid of the projections! Why project an image of the painting Sadie was so fond of? If it is so important to include — which, in my view, it is certainly not — why not print the picture out and stick it in a frame, have her find it amongst the rest of the memory-filled toot around the house? Perhaps this is due to Runt of the Litter’s focus on sustainability and, in particular, found/recycled props, but it is strange to me that their ethos is not reflected in their technical choices and the impact on the environment and resources that using so many lighting states has… The lack of simple creative solutions in lieu of ‘fancy’ tech that pushes the creatives far out of their depths is just irksome to me. My last note on projections is quite an urgent one: there is a potential huge copyright issue that I cannot better emphasise. I imagine that the creatives have not acquired the appropriate licenses to exhibit the copyrighted songs and footage that they do, especially considering how many are from Disney and how expensive this would be. The potential legal consequences of this just are not worth it. Again: get rid of the projections! “An extremely weak and confused performance…highly disappointing.”

For clarification, when Mika is mentioned in this review, this refers to the character depicted in the dramatic text. When Johnson is mentioned, this refers to performer Mika Onyx Johnson. This review will consider Pink Lemonade, written and performed by Mika Onyx Johnson, directed by Emily Aboud and produced by The Queer House. This performance was recently staged at the Bush Theatre. I shall start with set design, given that this is what the audience will notice first. Seemingly plain at first, the repeated geometry of the back wall, platform and columns, smooth and repeated, symmetrical, along with the choice of fabric, allows for a sensual fluidity, a delicateness. This is pleasing and facilitative, particularly when the set pieces are caressed by Johnson, as though the undulations of another's body. However, whether this reflects the content of the dramatic text is something I find debatable. It is slightly too delicate, too smooth, and too feminine for a character who is mostly fixated upon masculine ostentation, despite the odd self-empowering "I can wear/do what I want" attitude. The shade of pink, pastel, is also understated for someone with such confidence and who describes themselves as distinct, as standing out. Furthermore, on a similar note, sensuality and sexuality have their nuances; this text leans emphatically towards the latter, and set design should do the same. The set certainly proves itself to be very versatile, though; its functionality in combination with technical elements is sublime. The installation of the LEDs in the back wall and in the pedestal enlivens and dramatises what could otherwise be very static set pieces. The recess in the podium is very effective for concealing theatrical properties, and the set's ability to drop lemons at whim from trap-doored compartments in the fly tower is most attractive. I should comment here on the lemons specifically, seeing as they apparently have a titular significance. They do not. The lemons are completely negligible. They seem to amount to nothing, a cheap embodiment of the punchline 'when life gives you lemons' delivered implicitly at the end of the performance. They are understated. When the first lemon falls, a clear link is made between this fruit and trauma, specifically sexual trauma, with the inclusion of dramatic music and sex noises, and then Johnson's poetry [more on this later]. So, their significance is clear from their first appearance, but they simply obscure performance style. Their sudden plummeting to the ground is absurd, melodramatic, comedic, quirky. This energy is not shared by the dramatic text. Rarely handled or referred to, abandoned and useless, the lemons are finally used by Johnson towards the middle-end of the performance in a short stylised sequence of interpretive movement. Again, completely stylistically incompatible with the dramatic text. Put simply, more lemons are needed; the stage should either be swamped with them or not touched by them at all. They are simply too comedic and bizarre to be included so nonchalantly in the text. Their significance needs to be overly explicit to deserve a place in this performance. On to Johnson's performance. I shall start with Johnson's aforementioned poetry, whose delivery blends rap and spoken word. For the most part, these poetic segments make for clever intervals throughout the performance that help elucidate the subtext of and political messages behind the material we have seen thus far. They readjust the fictional material to speak of real matters and real issues that affect not just the character of Mika but many of us. For this reason, they are effective. However, whilst the messages of these poetic segments are poignant and well expressed, clearcut, they are communicated fully very early on in the poems, meaning that content quickly becomes somewhat repetitive or bland. Sometimes, their content teeters too fragilely between the fictional and the real. For example, some segments are dedicated to fictional characters, like the one aimed at Simmi, meaning that the segments themselves become inherently fictionalised, part of the narrative, and this leads to a certain disparity where Johnson’s voice as Mika becomes sorely entwined with Johnson’s voice as a spoken word artist. I understand the incentive to re-present Simmi as a synecdochical reference in this poem, as a symbol of all of the likeminded people who would treat individuals like Mika this way, but the message would be clear[er] without this. These segments also have the constantly rising intonation and repetitive rhyming scheme that we see far too often with spoken word, and it is a style that renders all of these segments far too similar and hence monotonous. For example, Johnson's over-reliance upon internal rhymes – particularly, upon the repeated rhyming of suffixes. Having so many of these segments, variation is required for a diversified and hence engaging audience experience. I shall now backtrack to the very beginning of the performance. Johnson enters, eyes the audience up cockily and then proceeds to dry hump the set, the walls, the platform, wining, slut-dropping, etc. Conceptually, this is a strong opening, allowing Johnson to hypersexualise their body before an audience who will then naturally be forced to sexually objectify it. This is effective, with the sexual objectification and fetishisation of Black and trans bodies being a principal area of focus here. However, more conviction is needed in this overture and in all other sequences like it. Johnson fails to energise their physicality with the required intensity and vigour to make this credible and commanding as opposed to awkward and half-baked. What is more, this overture is simply too long. Much like with the repetitive content of the poems, there’s a sense of “We get it already.” A similar problem persists throughout this performance. Every time music plays, without fail, Johnson waits for the introductions of the songs to come to an end, and, for some reason, every song has a lengthy introduction, indeed. Either these need to be edited shorter, or Johnson needs to come up with something useful to do whilst these introductions play, instead of standing still, staring off into space ‘dramatically’, or sometimes expressionless, waiting for their cue. Another note, on eye contact. Johnson confidently looks audience members in the eye, and the forced engagement that naturally results from this is certainly worthwhile in this performance, but I would just recommend offering the same amount of eye contact to the audience members beyond the first row. The interaction becomes rather exclusive quite quickly. I would recommend getting into the habit of scanning the entire audience very early on into the performance for this reason; Johnson only gradually works their way around the house, usually only directing their gaze at the members directly in front of them or in their immediate periphery. Similarly, Johnson often has their back to the audience. Depending on the type of performance, this is not necessarily an issue; for this performance, it certainly is and must be noted. There is an instance, for example, when Johnson performs to the corner of the audience Downstage Right, far from and turning their back to the audience Stage Left. And this is quite a lengthy interaction, too, a lot of time to allow other audience members to feel distanced, excluded. This needs to be examined. Personally, I would remove these more direct audience interactions completely; they add nothing but an awkward and unhelpful awareness of the self. Johnson is, nonetheless, a highly adequate performer who certainly has stage presence. Their comedic timing and the driving force behind their physicality must be worked on, particularly in these aforementioned 'raunchier' scenes, but Johnson demonstrates great conviction and good credibility in their character portrayals. The sort of conviction Johnson demonstrates in their spoken word segments is what I would like to see throughout. In terms of the politics of the dramatic text, there seems to be a slight disconnect from the material presented throughout – which focuses primarily on the fetishisation and abuse of trans bodies and the psychological trauma associable with a trans identity – and Johnson's concluding speech, which focuses heavily on the eroticisation and White oppression of black bodies and only slightly on trans oppression. A focus on Blackness and White perception of black people certainly features recurrently in this text but is made to feel less important in terms of where audience focus is redirected. For example, whilst Mika's race is what prompts their first hookup, it is only their trans identity that seems to enable them to maintain any kind of relationship or sexual interest from others, such as with Simmi. The latter is presented to hold a lot more weight than the former and remains the most significant factor insofar as how Mika's interactions with others are influenced, and how her physical body, identity and psychology are perceived and abused by others. Black and trans issues should not be separated so distinctly in this dramatic text. However, I cannot say that they are always so separated. There are, indeed, moments when the two are used effectively in combination in this performance to provide an introduction into the specific oppression of Black trans people and their prejudices. For example, how Mika's black and trans identities combine together to place them in the quite unique predicament outside the pub is a most effective depiction of particularised circumstances to which only such minorities can directly relate. However, the interrelationship between these two is, for the most part, ignored in favour of descriptions of Black oppression and trans oppression being kept unique and separate. If I took out from this text all of the sections referring to Black oppression and all of those referring to trans oppression, for example, an interplay between the two would be difficult to identify, where they ought to be so well interwoven that they are inextricable from one another. This dramatic text is so poignant and important in its unique specificity, and this should not be overlooked as it is here. Nevertheless, this text reflects clear trends in our culture to hypersexualise and fetishise black and trans identities and does so with sincerity and a poignant lived experience from Johnson. Comedy and playfulness are combined well with the serious political content to make the material presented inviting and non-confrontational where it need be. When confrontation does occur, however, it is done necessarily and productively. This is a good, re-humanising reflection on the troubles our minorities face on a daily basis and on the complexities and specificities of the psychology of sex. Dealing with the paradoxical pursuits of trauma and the psychological consequences of what happens when this trauma is eventually discovered, and exploring the categorical eroticisation of the physical and the social body, this dramatic text certainly has a lot to offer. I am afraid, however, Johnson needs to work on exactly how their content is presented and communicated. They need to rethink how to fuse different, conflicting modes of performance (poetry, movement, realism, etc.) together, or perhaps consider when one mode should be removed in favour of another. “An insightful and valuable performance but one relying too heavily on conflicting artistic modes.”

For readers wishing to purchase tickets to Luminosa, the tour has now been cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances. Before starting this review, it is worth pointing out that this circus performance sees a rotation of talent with every show. Thus, this review can only be particular to the night I saw the performance. A persistent dilemma circus performances have found themselves in for quite some time now pertains to presenting a talent not unique to their own performers but shared by many others to an audience usually consisting of other circus performers or keen circus enthusiasts. This is where theme and personality come in. A circus performance must develop its own unique style and character but must also not deviate too far from ‘circus’ and become what we might refer to as ‘drama’. Circus hence relies quite heavily on its ability to attract audiences not just by the impressive and extensive repertoires of its talents but also by its spectacular aesthetics, moody costumes and particularised theme. Without these, a circus performance is in danger of presenting the same work by the same talents over and over. Luminosa decided, as many circuses do, upon a blend of circus and cabaret, presenting a [quite literally] dark performance that blurs gender, accentuates the sensual and the sexual, and attempts to lure its audience into a hypnotic and fearsome trance-like state. But, hyperbolic descriptions out of the way, I shall now address how successful and how well communicated this decision was. First to grace the stage is Peter Reynolds, a composer and singer that we would equate to an emcee — and this is how I shall refer to him in this review. Wearing a plain black suit, his hair slicked back and complete with a simple pink clip, his look does not scream visual intrigue. He is pedestrian, in fact. He slips onto the stage whilst the house lights are still up, discreet, only offering an expressionless glance around the audience. From the very beginning, then, his significance is understated, unintroduced and left unclear. He is important to mention, however, because a great deal of time is consumed by his songs. His voice sifting between natural and grouching in an attempt to be ‘eerie’ and volatile, Reynolds regularly has the stage to himself, performing songs whose gibberish lyrics ‘focus’ on passion, emotion, waiting at train stations…and the devil…but also on nothing at all. His mystical — or, rather, nonsensical — lyrics like ‘arrival on the F’, combined with repetitive, rising and falling, sometimes gentle and other times dramatic music, certainly produce that aforementioned sense of trance but not quite the engrossing and mystifying one desired by the creatives; instead, the emcee’s performance gives way to a bewildering, numbing trance that leaves its audience in a state of boredom, perplexity or complete disengagement, lost in their own, more exciting daydreams, as the post-performance comments I overheard confirmed. So, the attempts towards a cabaret-esque library of songs is clear, but to what avail? There are a few reasons as to why I find the inclusion of these songs to be problematic, and I shall mention a few, not focusing again on the lack of purpose or coherency in their content. Firstly, I shall ingeminate, I believe the failure to introduce the emcee appropriately, and perhaps to find a better placement for him, as opposed to having him cramped in the downstage-left corner, the failure to instate the significance of his presence from the very beginning as worth listening to, is at the heart of the issue here. We are simply not forced to care what the random, ‘creepy’ and obscured man in the corner is singing about. However, I have a more significant concern. Any eerieness that is set up by the emcee is completely dismantled by the melodramatic and mime-heavy comedy we are presented throughout: from performers pretending to be frogs, jumping across the stage; to one performer bearing her breasts proudly and broadly to the audience, escaping another who scrambles to conceal her; to another performer ‘dying’ — or perhaps being just knocked unconscious? Hard to tell, due to the faltering corporeal expressivity… From slapstick to burlesque to campy and to dark, one could say that this performance has ‘everything’, just as the emcee promises us in his first speech; I, however, would argue that it attempts to provide us with so much that it ends up providing us with nothing at all. Mood, voice and tone are all compromised by the performance’s sheer inconsistency of style. Even the fact that all artists stay mute in mime whilst one stand-out performer blurts his utterances throughout, later joined by a few others who pipe up towards the middle-end…nothing seems decisive and clear in this performance. Introduced by the emcee to us as ‘the last performance in London’ and so ‘a very special performance’, one with a ‘bit of everything’, there is very little extra of value offered to us than the bare minimum talent that we would expect from a circus performance. Why frogs? Or fishes, as the emcee says? These elements have nothing to do with the rest of the content and so subtract from any identity that the performance could procure itself. Perhaps the intention was to bombard us with an array of absurd happenings; if so, this intention is most fallible and is not what cabaret is about. Absurdity, paradoxically, must still have its reasons to be in contexts such as the one offered by this performance. The absurdity of a cabaret has a very specific and special function that the absurdity in this performance does not at all. This lack of identity is not just limited to the performative elements of the show but extends to its general aesthetic, too. Grey boiler suits for the performers and a black suit for the emcee; one performer in a leotard, another in a harem costume, another in his boxers… no clear aesthetic where costume is concerned, then. But the thing suffering the most from a lack of identity in aesthetic is the performance’s theme implied chiefly by the show’s title, Luminosa: light. Performers first enter the darkened stage with tea-lights in their hands, then blow them out to start on a slightly messy overture, running, jumping and cartwheeling busily across the stage…and that is the only form of light we see besides the negligible torches and spotlights used to illuminate the emcee. At least, that is until the middle-end of the performance when Zaki Musa enters wearing high stilettos and a light-up fencing mask whose mesh is replaced with a covering of multicoloured LEDs. A little while into the act, however, he takes it off…so…that was that. It is so peculiar to me that Musa would take this mask off. To keep it on absolutely removes him of humanity and identity, causing us to focus on his body alone. This both accentuates the deliberate campy/raunchy sexual objectification he promotes and, more importantly, reminds us that this is a circus performance that inherently wants us to focus on the articulacy, flexibility, form and fascinating capabilities of the human body. Plus, it keeps us on theme! Lights! Why on Earth get rid of the main feature of this act that makes it so visually unique and spectacular? It is really easy to feel cheated in moments like this. Then, there is the question of whether Musa sprawling ‘sexily’ over and across the stage for the majority of this second act can really qualify as a circus act. Having said more than a sufficient amount about the theatricalities of this performance, I shall now move on to the circus acts themselves. The performance mostly comprises aerial acrobatics. Performers — Danielle Summer and Tilly Mae, in particular — demonstrate excellent corporeal control, but all are shaky at times, especially towards the beginning and in moments where full extension and reach of the limbs are required. Synchronisation where it is required — in the trapeze act, for example — is certainly lacking, also. The routines we are presented are certainly impressive by nature, but with so many aerial acts, an issue of repetitiveness surfaces, with all performers encroaching on the talents already presented to us by their counterparts. Aerial artists need to emphasise in their performance the skills that their specific acts require over other aerial works. For example, the rapid spins in Summer’s aerial hoop act vs the sudden drops required from Musa in his aerial silks act [although, I must add here that this latter stunt was terribly executed, unfortunately]. More moments like these would be very beneficial in further distinguishing and showcasing the skillsets and talents that these performers possess, especially in order to cater for audience members who are new to circus and cannot discern the differences between one aerial form and another on a purely visual basis. Performers attempt occasionally to infuse their acts with a sense of danger — again, the silk drops, for example — but this does not ever pay off, I am afraid. When this ‘danger’ is presented in this performance, one of two things persistently happens: 1) the danger is awkwardly re-emphasised as out of the performer’s control by unwanted stumbling or ill-footing, and we get a sense that we have just witnessed an inexperienced performer save themselves by lucky chance as opposed to conquering fatal risk with sheer talent and ability; or 2) the act does not feel dangerous enough, for it is performed too low from the floor of the stage or because a lack of corporeal expressivity dampens the effect. The most impressive act by far is Valerie Jauregui’s foot juggling, which demonstrates tremendous skill, training, flexibility and focus, and this should be seen as an exemplar of creating a sense of risk: the entrancing routines are so visually complex that it is easy for an observer to feel confounded as to how the actually rather simple mechanism is functioning, and the risk of dropping the ball amongst all of the perceived chaos becomes intensified — not a sensationalist risk that causes excessive focus on fatality, but a risk that utterly enthrals and captivates, nevertheless. A few final notes on showmanship. Performers are persistently seen clambering about backstage. No! If performers are off-stage, they must remain unseen. This is entirely distracting. There are curtains to conceal the wings for a reason, and when they are used, they are effective, but too often, they are not. Until you are invisible off-stage, you must still perform. In Luminosa, performers quickly lose their physicalities when approaching the wings and slump naturally off stage. Poise, stature, energy and performativity must be kept constant until performers are off stage. Lastly, to give a big grin at the end of an act is a classical convention that competes with the dark theme of this performance. I would recommend more of a sinister yet engrossing, empowered glare. And only a slight smirk, if some sort of ‘smile’ is desired. Otherwise, style and its communications are confused, again. “A performance offering good talent but little in terms of the unique and special.”

For clarification: where ‘Pryle’ alone is written, this refers to performer Rebecca Pryle. References to Olivia Pryle will be clarified by the inclusion of her full name. This review considers Follow the Lines, performed by Rebecca Pryle, written by Olivia Pryle, directed by Velenzia Spearpoint, and staged at The Bread and Roses Theatre as part of the Camden Fringe. To book your tickets to any of the Fringe events, click here. I shall start with the acting. Rebecca Pryle is a wonderful performer, demonstrating good credibility, vitality and conviction. With characters excellently differentiated, Pryle proves herself capable of an exemplary transformativity [though I would perhaps re-examine the Spanish accent used to portray an Italian character]. Projection is good. Emotionality and expressivity are great. A very talented actress. I do, however, have a few negatives to deliver. A typical piece of advice we give to nervous performers is pick a spot above the audience and perform to it. This is good for young performers specifically but is not something we expect of professional actors. Pryle’s gaze often hovers over the audience’s heads. In order for an audience to fully connect with a dramatic text like this, performer eye contact is emphatically necessary; a fixed gaze is subtractive and allows for an audience-performer disconnect. Similarly, there are too many instances where Pryle finds herself at either side of the stage performing only towards the corresponding audience members in front of her. This allows for a sense of exclusivity and should be avoided. Scanning [naturally, delicately, not erratically] the entire audience, from left to right, when on one side of the stage would negate this issue and is something I recommend Pryle do. Pacing. Especially in the beginning of this performance, Pryle storms through the text. My advice is to breathe! Nerves clearly got the better of her, and I would recommend Pryle look into developing some breathing techniques personalised to her to practice before a show. This speed made way for many slip-ups on words, a disruption of comedic timing and a potential information overload for the audience. However, I should emphasise that this was only at the beginning of the performance; Pryle’s pacing soon levelled and ended up being perfect. Beyond the above notes, an impeccable performance from Pryle. There is a definite issue with pacing in the writing itself, however, and this certainly needs to be revised. The dramatic text fails to juggle momentum, starting incredibly energised and dwindling slowly with the developments of Chloe’s melancholia. This culminates in a long-winded monologue about frustrations, feelings, opinons and anxieties and desires for self-worth and self-esteem. I would recommend shortening this final monologue – which starts to feel rather like an emotional outpour from the writer than from the character – and perhaps replacing the time it subtracts with more material whose energy equates that perceptible in the opening scenes. No fault of Pryle’s as a performer, this remains clearly an editorial issue. Momentum is simply not considered carefully enough in the written text. Admittedly, attempts to uplift momentum are certainly made by Olivia Pryle, such as Chloe’s romantic interest in a server at a café, but these are simply too short-lived, and we soon return to the more neutral material. After the high energy of the beginning falls with the introduction of more static or calmer material, we are then presented the news of Chloe’s mother’s illness. To have something sad after a focus on low-energy material is simply draining. Perhaps this was deliberate? Perhaps writer Olivia Pryle felt uncomfortable placing cancer after high-energy, comedic material? But this discomfort should be ignored in favour of stronger dynamism. Besides, it is often that such heart-wrenching news follows the positive or the neutral. To present material invoking such contrasting emotions like this would not be insensitive but actually rather welcomed. There is also an issue with the registers of language used by Chloe. These are far too inconsistent and disrupt the naturalism offered by the text. For example, Chloe says something like ‘[the men were] patting each other with a gesture of tribal acceptance’. This does not reflect the natural patterns of spoken language, and it is easy with phrases like these to feel disconnected and formally removed from the text, as though we have lost that conversational, intimate aspect of Chloe’s speech. Nevertheless, the text deals with very human and intimate concerns that speak true to an often-overlooked, dull suffering that a huge number, if not all, of us experience on a daily basis. It voices the otherwise neglected and seeming unworthwhile but incredibly important hollowness that many of us experience in this modernised world that seems to storm past us, expanding and advancing exponentially, and leave us behind. A text that reminds us of our individual responses and needs in a fast-paced world of demands, political exigence, and fear. As far as tech is concerned, sound (designed by Sassy Clyde) is wonderfully designed and operated, particularly the soundscapes wherein we hear many echoic recordings of Chloe addressing herself, distressed, empowered, etc. I would just recommend more reverb be placed on these audio clips here; some are far too crisp to imply internal thoughts. I would also recommend Pryle focus more on the intonation and delivery of her lines within these soundscapes, as some of the audio clips see her lack a degree of credibility. Symbolic and facilitative, all sound effects are used appropriately and well. Theatrical properties are perhaps slightly overused, but this does not subtract too significantly from legibility or visual intrigue. Overall, a powerful performance from Pryle of a somewhat struggling dramatic text that could do with some rather drastic edits. “An unsteady text made enjoyable by a very talented performer.” Photography credit: Vincenzo Albano.

The full title of this performance is: Near the Statue Between the Church and the Market Just a Bit to the Right Behind the Pigeon Underneath the Tree Around the Corner Three Steps from the Puddle. And Just a Hair Further. [sic] It was staged as part of the Clapham Fringe at The Bread and Roses Theatre. To buy your ticket to any of the remaining Fringe events, click here. Only lasting less than half an hour, I cannot deny that this two-woman performance is very entertaining and fun. Nevertheless, whether it communicates exactly what it sets out to is debatable. Having not read the description of this performance, an audience member would have no idea that Eleanor Felton and Gaia Cicolani are caricaturising an array of dwellers in a fictional town. This is not communicated well at all. But is this necessarily a problem? Yes and no. Whatever the inspirations are for their various characters, Cicolani and Felton have put together a wonderful variety of characters, and these are differentiated rather well through repeated skits and distinct physicalities. However, they are perhaps too varied. Some caricatures are extremely animalistic – one pair, upon reflection on the title, clearly being a couple of pigeons, and the others…nondescript; others, very human, ordered, military; and the rest, simply troglodytic. Oh, and the humanised statue. Visually, there is an enormous lack of cohesion and theme, and this renders the collection somewhat overly chaotic and disordered. The final outro, in particular, presenting one final celebratory collage of all of the characters, is simply messy. Admittedly, it is clear as to what is happening in this outro, but is a reflection and re-presentation of the characters like this necessary? I do not believe so. I would recommend a more systematic approach in strutting the material. As it plays such a monumental part in the conception of this performance, I would recommend that the town be introduced to us at the beginning. There should then be a clear separation between scenes, perhaps of an episodic nature, introducing the various caricatures separately. Material should also be distinctly different from one ‘episode’ to another. As it stands, the two creatives rely far too heavily on one character upsetting the other, and the latter then cries to the audience. This very quickly becomes overplayed and repetitive — and not to mention that this is poorly executed by Felton [more on this shortly]. Organisation of material, then, is irritating. And I do not mean that I would like a sense of plot; this is unnecessary for this performance. But why scenes are organised as they are is very important to consider. At the moment, the material feels far too disparate, disjointed and dissimilar, and this is what makes this final outro…icky for me. Cicolani and Felton describe this performance as ‘wholesome’, stating in their synopsis that ‘viewers find moments of recognition with themselves and each other, building a deeper sense of shared empathy and connection’…from a bird urinating on a statue? From one ‘soldier’ regulating the movements of another? I do not think so. It is clear that the duo have misunderstood the very nature of their work, which, overall, is too esoteric to lead to any profound emotional reflections amongst audience members. The choice of material is simply strange to me, and not in an inviting, absurd way that takes us on its thrilling ride; it is strange in an ill-communicated and incoherent way. Cicolani and Felton have not understood what effects their material produces and how material combines to produce an overall theme — or not in this case. I believe this is the reason as to why the material is so disparate. They have simply thrown together characters and sequences that they find comedically effective, and the ‘varied quirky townspeople’ is the perfect excuse to sell this off as coherent. The characters, well-defined though they are, are not cohesive at all; they do not paint a bigger picture or communicate any messages to their viewers. This simply is not what the work achieves. It does, however, succeed in presenting comedic skits to its audience. The characters, for the most part, are engaging, sweet and enchanting. They are otherworldly, comical to observe. I would just recommend staying away from repeating the same routines over and over. This is a half-hour performance; there is no excuse for anything resembling repetition. As far as performativity is concerned, Cicolani is by far the strongest of the two. She demonstrates wonderful physicality and expressivity, from the scrunching of her brows to the pointing of her toes. She performs with spectacular corporeal tension, flexibility and form. A very talented performer and a great mime. Felton, however, is incredibly frustrating to watch, I must say. Any physicality is restricted solely to the upper body, often with emphasis on the face alone. My advice would, of course, be that she pay attention to what her legs are doing on stage but, more importantly, to the localisation of tensions throughout her entire body. This is especially important for what I shall refer to as the ‘sword scene’, the ‘dancing scene’ and for all of those countless portrayals of ‘crying’. We should see the imagined force concentrated in her legs as she tries to lift the heavy object and should see complete distress and limpness throughout the entire body when she ‘cries’. This is mime, not psychological realism. Perform! Felton is simply too limp, uninvograted, and her underperformative mimes are often completely illegible as a result of this. To finish, some short and trivial notes that are perhaps unwanted from me… Firstly, I must note that the grammar in the title is very poor. Second, whilst acknowledging that I did not pay, myself, I did notice that the price for this performance was £9 [£7 for concessions], and I must say that this is definitely overpriced. £6 at most! No more than this! Third, leaving the curtain open, revealing the toot in the wing, and sitting on the side of the stage with your back to the audience…no! Completely demolishes any sense of illusion. If you need to sit off to the side, cross your legs and remain on stage. Otherwise, you needlessly extend the performance space into the territory of ‘the realm of the real’. Fourth, do not spin on the scaffolding holding up the fly tower! Incredibly dangerous. And finally, a rather awkward note…I would recommend changing the costume. Thematically, though it is somewhat questionable, I have no real concerns with it. However, given the amount of physical movement required from the performance, this costume proves to be rather ill-fitting…the shorts are simply too high and revealing. They rise. This would perhaps be excusable if it were a decisive element of the performance, but I do not believe this is intentional. An awkward note to end on but necessary to mention, I believe. “A comical and worthwhile performance but one promising what it cannot deliver.”

Written by Laura May Price and directed by Beth Wilson, Dinner Theatre was recently staged at The Bread and Roses Theatre as part of the Camden Fringe. To book your tickets to any of the Fringe events, click here. I have a mixed response to this performance. On one hand, it offers tremendous comedy, both in writing and through its excellent performers; and on the other, it offers more sincere and ‘serious’ content that is nowhere near as hitting or effective. As a comedy, then, this dramatic text is wonderful; as a political text, it fails to capture and inform. I shall get some trivial notes out of the way first. There are moments when characters exit the 'living room' and enter the 'kitchen'. To portray this on stage, ‘exiting’ performers mime going through a doorway — when they remember to — and the remaining performers pretend to be having a conversation with one another ‘back in the living room’. These simultaneous scenes are incredibly untidy, with the remaining performers unable to decide whether to perform mute mime or to stage whisper amongst themselves. Mimed action is either incredibly distracting, as with the palm-readings, or simply incongruous with the text, as with Ethan Joseph Robert (playing Noah) and Sarah Wenban (playing Noah’s Grandmother, Frances) miming as though having an effortless and comfortable interaction, despite the fact that Noah is supposed to be feeling disconnected from and awkward around her throughout the text. I would recommend the obvious: separate lighting states to differentiate the two scenes; dim the living room lighting when action takes place in the kitchen – or by the front door. Then, decide what performers are doing specifically throughout all miming scenes. These interactions should not be extemporised in any way whatsoever; otherwise, they appear sloppy, awkward and unrealistic. All aspects of the performance should be deliberate, thoughtful and, above all, coherent and legible. There is only so much palm-reading you can do before it naturally loses visual intrigue. And whilst it is clear that the miming performers do await specific cues from the ‘exited’ performers to guide their actions, these need to be a LOT more frequent than they currently are. On the night I saw the performance, there were a few technical errors — a frequent issue amongst technicians of the Clapham Fringe at the moment, for some reason. Performers styled this out as best as they could, and I commend them for the manner in which naturalism was maintained, specifically in what I shall refer to as ‘the dancing scene’, wherein the music failed to come on in time. I commend Laura May Price (also playing Billie), in particular, for her quick thinking. Although I cannot be sure as to what actually led to the issue, I have two words: tech runs! Three, at least! Now, on to more significant matters. I shall start with performativity. These performers are incredible, and I do not often get the chance to say this of an entire cast. From comedic timing to expressivity to credibility to vitality, these performers are talented, indeed! Any lack of naturalism originates from direction and the writing itself. Performers demonstrate a clear sense of character psychology and intent and focus their energy well into a fascinating physicality and facial expressivity, particularly Robert. A wonderful and dynamic cast! I mentioned that there were issues concerning naturalism as far as direction and writing are concerned. With direction, I refer to these jarring moments of mime, for example, and other such instances where energy is allowed to drop or where directorial decisions mean that character intent seems noncommunicable or inconsistent. In regard to the written text, lack of naturalism originates from the deliberate [and effective] corniness of the writing itself or from its own inability to construct and typify natural speech where necessary. What is most impressive about this cast is their clear sense of chemistry. Perhaps this speaks less of Iara Mario Brito Borges (playing Leah), particularly in regard to the rigid kiss she shares with Price, but, otherwise, all moments requiring clear physical affection are executed wonderfully. I refer to actions like the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it squeeze of the leg Robert gives Price; the tight hugs Price and Ross McShane (playing Ollie) go out of their way to share; or Robert placing his leg over McShane’s lap, upon which McShane then places his hand. A sense of intimacy and collectivity is certainly portrayed exquisitely in this performance in these ways. However, portrayals of intimacy and lack thereof do bring me to the entrance of Noah’s Grandmother. Both in the written text and in performance, her entrance is entirely understated. The awkward hug Wenban shares with Robert is completely underplayed, she is quickly welcomed into the house and sat down, and initial conversations are certainly not overly positive but they are not negative, either. They are awkward, but only because the performers are overplaying this, with good direction, not because it is written in the text. And because it is not written in the text, there is only so much that performers can do to convince us. Only chastising him for dropping out of education — and why writer Price has chosen to focus on this, I am not too sure — Noah’s Grandmother is actually quite a gentle and sweet character. She is accommodating, jokey, engaged with the other characters — she even dances with them! We certainly need more from her to feel that she is such a threat. We need constant castigation; negative, unwanted criticisms; refutals of everything any other character says. This is a comedy! This must be amped up, exaggerated! This becomes quite a big issue when we consider that she also demonstrates no homophobic hostility. Whilst Noah recounts a few of his negative experiences regarding his grandmother’s ‘homophobia’, such as her opinions on ballet danseurs, we really get no sense of his grandmother’s homophobia ‘from the horse’s mouth’, so to speak, at all throughout the performance. We do get a short-lived outburst about non-binary pronouns but nothing at all when the other characters mention Stonewall, Pride or gay rights in general, just to name a few instances where her homophobia would definitely shine through if it truly existed at the level Noah describes. In this way, any slight sense of ‘homophobia’ we do get does not really communicate Frances’s disgust with homosexuality; rather, with men who do not subscribe to traditional concepts of masculinity and manhood. Ultimately, this could be a form of homophobia, but it is a very nuanced one, as we are still not getting a great sense of her phobia of or views towards homosexuality specifically, as opposed to of and towards 'effeminate' or 'non-traditional' men. Her derisions better approximate transphobia than anything else. Perhaps writer Price was concerned about presenting a homophobic character, either out of fear of offending audience members or fear of disrupting the overall comedic feel of the performance — although, I should not think it was this latter, given the political material with which we are inundated [more on this below]. Whatever writer Price’s potential anxiety, Noah’s Grandmother being homophobic is the very reason this story can exist in the form that it does; we need to witness it for ourselves! This is actually one of the reasons I find the ending to be so incredibly disappointing. It is easy to feel cheated when we are left with a cliffhanger as to how Noah’s Grandmother will actually react now that she is aware of his sexual orientation. As I wrote above, her response to this is supposed to be the very premise of the text. So, we do not get the typical happy ending comedy usually delivers us, and this is somewhat deflating. However, a more significant factor leading to my disappointment is that by this point, we are not made to care what Noah’s grandmother actually thinks. With her aforementioned sweet demeanour and almost complete lack of prejudgements, the threat of how she might react is just not powerful enough to warrant this cliffhanger. This is especially true when we consider that throughout Robert’s final speech, Wenban actually remains either completely neutral or smiley, her facial expressions even leaning towards empathetic sometimes! It is quite clear her character is not as disgusted as one would imagine, then. So, why the cliffhanger? What could we possibly have left to ponder over as audience members, to worry about, to overthink, to imagine? Another reason the ending is so poor is due to the political focus of the dramatic text. Ollie and Noah’s heart-to-hearts in the kitchen quickly turn into huge rants about representation in the media and the daily suffering we all experience as gay men, amongst many other suchlike subjects. We lose sight of Noah’s character, personality and psychology, and he quickly becomes an uninterrupted mouthpiece for the political opinions of the writer. His speech swiftly becomes an unchallenged and univocal lecture, uninterrupted by the other characters who have been waiting shockingly nonchalantly for over ten minutes for him to return with a mere recipe. This political content, resonant though its reality is, seems rather pointless to me to include. That this performance can function as a comedy relies on the fact that its audience will already share the sociopolitical beliefs inherent to and expressed through the dramatic text. Its intended audience is chiefly a team of progressive LGTBT-allies or, indeed, members of the LGBT+ community, perhaps ‘millennials’, who celebrate their own homosexuality or the queerness of others. The intended audience would find this comedy funny because they share the exact same frustrations as Noah about “the older generation”, to which his grandmother would belong, and their principles. Thus, these political spiels rather ‘preach to the converted’, so to speak. They feel needless, ineffective. Inherently political, there is no need to politicise this comedy any further. Keep it light, amusing. Most importantly, these scenes completely change the tone of the performance. I cannot stress how long these kitchen scenes are. The amount of time consumed by them allows us to 1) forget that this is even a comedy and not an average [and unimaginative] political play, and 2) lose any sense of pressure and imminency that the text has spent so long building up for us. More and more characters arriving at the door, an expanding web of lies, the imminent shunning from an important family member, all of this makes for a wonderful sense of climax, chaos, pressure…and all of it for nothing for these slow and heavy scenes. The first kitchen scene alone is ridiculously long, and then there is another just like it! I must recommend with emphasis that these two kitchen scenes be cut into one if they are to be included at all, and this includes when Noah and Ollie talk about the future of their relationship specifically. In fact, I would recommend having one [short!] scene, instead, that deals solely with them fixing their rocky relationship in the way that they do. Having two almost identical scenes allows content to become far too repetitive. This is why I write that we simply are not made to care anymore about the opinions of his grandmother. Besides, we have already established that her opinion is meaningless because Noah has so many loving friends that he can call family, instead. The risks, which used to be high, given that his grandmother was the ‘only family he had left’, have now fallen too low. What is there to lose? I shall end on a positive note by clarifying that areas that are meant to be funny certainly are hilarious. Writer Price has a wonderful comedic talent, and casting for this was perfectly executed. Definitely the right performers for these roles. “A glorious cast but an imbalanced dramatic text.”

This show was part of the Clapham Fringe. To book your tickets for any of the Fringe events, click here. I will start by clarifying that this show is a work in progress. However, it is one that I believe to be on track to being a rather strong performance. Solo standup comedian Chloe Petts’s demeanour when we first enter the room is welcoming and laid-back as she greets every one of us. She is conversational, informal, warm, inviting and a little cooky. Starting the show with a fumbling and dysfunctional tech that she ‘has done herself’, talking at us from the back of the house at the tech desk, there is a certain degree of unprofessionalism. But this does not do her a disservice. In fact, these factors together contribute to a very relatable and engaging persona. As an audience, we are made to feel comfortable with her, at ease. As she wanders through the house, talking to each of us directly, she dismantles the audience-performer barrier and, in doing so, causes us to feel as though we are active participants, free to interact with her – and perhaps each other. This is a great setup for comedy, as now we feel that we have a recognised presence in the space, which comes with the freedom to laugh. Petts certainly nurtures this relationship with her audience well, demonstrating great ability to personalise each of her performances. After interacting with individual audience members, which she does on a regular basis, and mostly to her benefit, Petts incorporates the gags that come of these interactions into her material well. She also avails herself of audience utterances, laughs and other notable moments that, when highlighted as they are, self-reference the risibility of the audience and the comedic nature of the performance. This is done consistently and, overall, appropriately, with just the right frequency. This is a great method, and I commend Petts for her effective use of it. Though theme is not currently communicated well at all through the material [more on this below], Petts's content retains a good degree of topicality and personality, dealing with subjects in which she has a keen interest or of which she has particularised opinions, and managing to humorise these and infuse them with subjectivity and individuality. For example, the persona she concretises as a 'tom-boyish lesbian' certainly plays a good part in this and equips Petts with her unique selling point of comedy, so to speak. This latter is to great avail, as well, particularly when her audience is mostly queer, as it was pointed out to be on the night I saw this show. However, I ruminate over how big a role lesbianism and other matters derivative of this play in this show when an audience is [supposedly / believed by Petts to be] almost exclusively straight. I would recommend she not change how big a role these matters play, as I believe her gender identity and sexuality play a monumental role, at least with this particular text, in influencing her content and persona. Now, I do have a few notable negatives. My first is quite a significant negative: do not, under any circumstances, work in progress or not, perform with a script. The perceived 'safety' of a script on stage causes a comedian to relax to such a degree that they forget their material. Panic then ensues, and panic is not good for memory, meaning that reliance upon the script is further augmented, and the cycle ensues. This was a cycle evident in Petts's performance here. Scripts also look untidy and communicate to an audience that the comedian cannot function alone, that it is the material itself that is funny and not the comedian, that the comedian is simply the messenger and that the real show lies within the text alone. I would advise Petts remember that this is still a paying audience whose members are giving up their time to see her performance. Whilst they can appreciate a work in progress and that comedy shows have to 'start somewhere', it is a lot more difficult to appreciate that they have spent money on something that communicates itself emphatically – more than it should – as half-baked, unready. It was clear to me that Petts was – at least, superficially – making notes on what jokes worked and what jokes did not. Rather than stopping, turning away from the audience, burying her nose in her notebook, and, most importantly, subtracting from the time she spends engaging with her audience, I recommend that Petts record her experimental performances and rewatch them alone in order to take notes privately, inconspicuously, as an artist. One must remember that in comedy, timing is everything. So, equally, pacing is everything. And turning to a script is a surefire way to slow pacing right down. Work in progress or not, before performing in front of a paying audience, Petts should memorise her material and perform it without external supports like a script, and this should be noted for all future performances. Every audience should feel special, treated, not just a Guinea pig to test on for something better that is coming along shortly and that they might not see if they do not pay for another ticket and come back again. And this brings me to a similar issue: Petts references persistently that this is a work in progress. This should be avoided. What is communicated here is "I am funny, I promise! I just don't know the joke properly yet." This allows for a loss in performer credibility and hence our trust – our trust in the comedian's ability to make us laugh and in the space as one which permits us the freedom of laughter. It also communicates "There is a better version of these jokes, and you will not see it tonight." This can cause for a sense of impatience and deflation. Again, avoid. It is common knowledge, even from common, everyday joke-telling, that as soon as the teller says, "Hold on, I can't remember how it goes", momentum and effect are dampened considerably. An audience can appreciate that this is a work in progress, but constant reiteration of that fact is counterproductive. Reiterating this does not placate an audience or make them more risible, more understanding; instead, it frustrates and offends and allows for a sense of exclusivity, half-heartedness and also disloyalty. Before I continue, I should clarify here that any extreme disengagement is definitely impermissible by Petts and the open and joyful environment she creates. She has far too strong a persona, complete with vitality, character, lovable idiosyncrasies and a great and engaging demeanour. She is a joy to watch, and her material shines through. Does material scream its theme of 'transience', though? Certainly not. Though references to the end of humanity, eco-anxiety and relative existential crises do make a recurrent appearance, they are not enough alone to unify the material and give it an overall identity. It feels as though transience inspired the show but ended up having nothing to do with the final text. Any references that are made to transience are sterile, almost academic, as though Petts is really trying to come across as though she has framed and structured her material seriously and has given a lot of thought to it…and then her next joke is about fat men playing darts. The humour lies not in any theme but in the random, unrelated and muddled material, which often playfully caricaturises and criticises the Other. The themes of sport or anxiety, for example, come up more than transience where comedic material is concerned, in fact. I recognise that this text is in its early conception, and I also recognise that this might be disheartening for Petts, but I do not think the theme of transience adds anything of value or credit to her performance. It is completely overlookable and, if anything, subtractive. If the theme of transience cannot be better solidified, and better humorised, it should be forgotten entirely. Rather than having any theme, I do not see why this performance cannot simply be named 'an evening with', as this is what the material better equates to. I do not believe any audience would be saddened to see this change, either. Better yet, a vaguer theme, an example of which might be Sarah Millican’s show, Chatterbox. A great and effective title that allows her to get away with just rambling about anything and everything; anything she could say is ‘on topic’, because the only theme is that she talks a lot. Furthermore, this title is effective because it communicates something about Millican's identity, her personality and character. Petts's show in its current form could benefit from a name like this, I believe. Those really are my only negative criticisms, but they are quite fundamental and persistent ones, hence the rating I give this work. As I have written repeatedly, both the material delivered in this show and the performer delivering it are both a treat to experience. I would just recommend more careful thought towards the organisation of material, in regard to what I have mentioned above. “A comical and inviting work that will surely see great improvement with time.”

Upon entering the house, I was delighted to see how much detail had gone into the set’s design. The set teems with the sport-heavy sort of paraphernalia one would associate with the stereotypical modern, upperclass misogynist. There is a lot to look at and, above all, a lot to infuse the set with a sense of realism and credibility. And then I notice Phoebe Taylor-Jones (playing Pheobe) sat at her switched-off MacBook, typing away to a black screen. This completely destroys the illusion. Turn it on! Actually type! Add more to a pre-written word document! Most disappointing. As the performance goes on, this set proves to be more and more problematic, with theatrical properties falling from the table edges and the sides, or being accidentally thrown off stage by the actors themselves. Although, I must admit that whilst this is terrible from a critical perspective, it certainly added a positive sense of chaos and character, with these ‘masculinely charged’ items proving fragile and vulnerable to the touch and with Giorgia Valentino (playing Matt) and Nandini Bulchandani’s (playing Matthew) timely and comical overreactions. But this was not a decisive element of the performance and so cannot be commended, though I can commend Valentino and Bulchandani for their apt and timely responses to these incidences. The performance begins. Valentino and Bulchandani make for a wonderful comedy duo. They have great stage presence, energy and vigour and, mostly, a great command on their roles. I must admit that Valentino is certainly the stronger performer, however, particularly with the voice Bulchandani has chosen for Matthew often faltering conspicuously. More vocal practice should be done to avoid this. I should also note that the two’s emotional range is somewhat limited – and not in the way it ought to be in presenting two ‘unfeeling’ misogynists. The two performers struggle, it seems, to shift from one emotional state to another. This is most notable for Bulchandani in moments where she is portraying her character’s sudden reconsideration of the nature or appropriateness of his and Matt’s sexist behaviour. Momentum is often slowed in these moments and credibility is lost. As for Taylor-Jones’s performance, I would recommend more attention to diction. Taylor-Jones slips up on her lines consistently, which is remarkable, considering how few she has. Her characters are well differentiated, however, but I would like to see more variation in her reactions to Matt and Matthew; her staring and the widening or rolling of her eyes become a little repetitive and unimaginative. Moving on to the writing. This is a very comical and, above all, relatable performance. Its characters, their psychology, motivations and intents are all impeccably conceived, and writer-producer Eve Lytollis certainly knows how to communicate her sociopolitical messages to an audience, overall. However, it is a lengthy performance, indeed. In terms of its duration, the performance is only just over an hour, but the content…drags, for lack of a better word. Certainly comedic and coherent, the content is repetitive, overall. I understand the desire to depict the two men as nebulous, mucking around and never getting anything productive done, but this costs us valuable stage time that could be used to better develop a sense of plot and narrative [and Phoebe’s character, as I shall continue below] which I do feel is needed by this particular dramatic text, in fact. As it stands, developments seem to come out of nowhere, such as Phoebe’s sudden crying or court order case. I should note here also that this latter is most peculiar to me, given that Matthew is the accused and yet has no idea that the case has been opened, and yet she still wins…most unrealistic. Again, I understand the idea behind making Phoebe a negligible, background character, receiving no attention from the men – and hence from us, enabling us perhaps to feel that we are joining in with the misogyny to some degree – but the execution does not do this justice. The constant presence of a female character is effective in forcing us away from forgetting the reality that underpins this comedy, the reality of how the men’s behaviour would affect and be perceived by a woman. And it also cleverly allows for the depiction of two different intensities of misogyny: how men treat, speak to and behave around women; and how they act and speak together in a woman’s absence, unfiltered and unafraid to speak what is “really” on their minds. However, Phoebe’s mere silent presence does not feel sufficient here. With Phoebe being the character who summarises and comments at the end upon all we have experienced throughout the performance, Phoebe has a vital function in extracting the sociopolitical messages of the text. We need to feel that she herself is important enough to listen to, for how an audience reacts and relates to the messages behind what Phoebe is saying is very different to how they react and relate to Phoebe specifically saying them. We need to feel that we are in agreement with the character of Phoebe, not the writer of Phoebe’s lines. I shall elucidate. Paradoxically, we have grown to love the characters of Matt and Matthew and their behaviour. We need something to challenge our enjoyment of and complacency towards this. This is the purpose of Phoebe’s final speech as well as revealing to us the effects their misogyny has had on her. Through her speech, our enjoyment must be changed to guilt, despair and empathy; yet, we cannot empathise with a character with which we have no bond. Psychologically, it is far too difficult to empathise with an enormous number of people – the entire female and female-identifying population, for instance – but to empathise with one singular character is easy, and so if we are made to empathise with Phoebe, we are better emotionally educated and informed through her final speech on how to empathise with real women in similar circumstances. This affect must be utilised, nay forced upon us. Increasing Phoebe’s presence in the narrative, we will be forced to see the misogyny we have thus far enjoyed through her eyes. In its current form, however, the dramatic text does not allow for us to empathise with Phoebe, for we have no idea who she is; instead, to agree with her speech, we rely solely on our own pre-existing and pre-established morality and opinions and our own lived/learned experiences, personal histories and understandings of misogyny. We only agree because we already feel the same way. This means that the dramatic text does not challenge anything, teach us anything, make us feel anything; it is simply a reiteration and confirmation of what we already believe. This must be readdressed. Because Phoebe exists in the world of the play and can only be influenced by the events of the play and the other characters, having empathised with her and now hearing her final speech allows us to zero in solely on the content of the dramatic text. We are not so easily influenced, then, by external factors, our individual politics or ‘contradictory’ experiences. This is why a better incorporation of Phoebe’s character is so important. Currently, it feels as though Phoebe is a negligible element of the play, that she is just another of the women Matt and Matthew criticise and prejudge. If she should be the one to finally educate them, they should themselves feel that she is important enough to listen to, too. At the moment, I see no reason as to why these men who constantly blame women’s emotions on PMS or general hysteria should see this final email as anything different. I feel it was also a mistake to portray the video footage of the famous actor’s wife. This is too stylistically different from what we have seen thus far and disrupts what is otherwise a static setting and an unchanging set of profiles, i.e. we quickly become aware that the three performers have one role only, and so multi-roling is destabilising, however well characterisations are differentiated. The role change is simply too short-lived and is never seen again, meaning that this role change feels incredibly out of place. Furthermore, opinions on women should be more generalised in this dramatic text, I feel, and references to specific women should be limited to Phoebe alone. I write this because this dramatic text limits its narrative to office-based misogyny, and I believe these external references confuse this narrative, despite the fact that these characters are supposedly journalists. I would recommend that the characters perhaps dedicate their time to more publications like their one on women and menstruation or perhaps spread their actor-crazed attention across multiple Hollywood actors. Such a dedicated focus to the one actor develops its own subplot that, I am afraid, does not notably go anywhere or serve the overall plot in any substantial way, though I understand the concept behind it. Whilst the comedy offered by the dramatic text is certainly effective, and whilst it is delivered wonderfully by Valentino and Bulchandani, the sheer amount of uninterrupted comedy means that the more serious scenes, like Matt’s masturbation scene, seem out of place, less resonant, less poignant. With Valentino and Bulchandani’s portrayals being principally caricaturistic, unrealistic, melodramatic, more work has to be done to remind us of the severity behind their misogynistic beliefs and behaviour. We are removed, through comedy, from this severity, and I would recommend more frequent moments of seriousness from the middle of the play onwards, to disrupt the comedic flow of the text and to reduce our distance from it. This scene would also be a good example of where our bond with Phoebe would be useful, given that walking in on Matt is something she actually mentions in her final speech as a principal reason she ‘sits crying on the bathroom floor’ every night. With some seriousness and more presence from Phoebe, we should be made to feel as uncomfortable as she does. Without some seriousness, this masturbation scene, in particular, is easy to overlook — as incidents like this so often are in reality, it seems, for the very same reasons — but this is, I should hope, unintentional. After scenes like this, we should be made to feel a sense of discomfort as audience members, uncomfortable with what we have just witnessed, unsure of how to feel about this character that we have, ironically, grown rather fond of [hating?]. Any further attention we are forced to give him should feel unwanted, disconcerting. A summary: as I have written above, the over-reliance upon comedy is sometimes impeding. Thumb wars, for example, could be replaced with more meaningful content that progresses the narrative or increases its profundity. Moving on. As for the decision to have women play the roles of Matt and Matthew, this was a very intelligent one. It highlights the discrepancies between the behaviours we associate readily with men but that appear strange on a woman and allow for a deliberate, condescending and irregular display of masculinity that would not be so apparent if the performers were, indeed, men. In doing so, the behaviour, actions and language that we would otherwise find offensive, misogynistic and uncomfortable are rendered ridiculous and made inviting, accessible. And, of course, this would benefit Phoebe’s final speech if it were better integrated into the text. Finally, tech. The various lighting states are used effectively, particularly to differentiate what we are to consider as ‘live action’ from recorded footage (the interview, for example). However, there could be fewer. Lighting operation in general is rather poor, with states changing too quickly and before performers are ready. I should also note that the lighting design in the final scene is most inadequate, with Taylor-Jones left unlit and a dim spotlight on Valentino and Bulchandani where their reactions are nonexistent and meaningless to illuminate. Sound, however, is used immaculately and facilitates the performance well, particularly with ‘Boys Will Be Boys’ by The Ordinary Boys being played during transitions. Personally, I must say that I rather enjoyed this performance, but my critical perspective and personal opinion are very different things. It is solely because of the reasons I have listed, which are significant and compromising, that I give the rating I do. “A dramatic text that ought to be considered a promising first draft but with a lot of work ahead.”

This review shall consider Scum, a play written by Taiyo Yoshida, directed by Jonathan Hawkins and recently staged at The Bread and Roses Theatre as part of the Clapham Fringe. It seems that playwright Taiyo Yoshida could not decide whether to create a comedy or a serious, heartfelt play. The overture is impassioned, reflective, inspiring…then we have chaotic comedy, with a planted glove, a dead cat and a desperate cleaning duo…and then a more serious and humdrum confrontation between the two despairing characters. How we are meant to feel leaving this performance, then, is most questionable. Stylistically, this is a very confused performance, and I myself am left feeling very confounded as to the significance of the sociocultural agenda sprinkled throughout the text to cause us to consider the social status of and lack of respect towards cleaners. This play, overall, is far too playful and nebulous to offer us any profound political insight; it should steer clear of this. I shall start with characterisation. The character of Fiona (Lucy Blake) is clear and well defined. We understand that she is hardworking and ambitious, driven and serious. We also understand her motivations and objectives — her desire to develop her cleaning business, for example. She has a life beyond the play, recounting her dates, her relationship with her mum, etc. Claire (Emily Ralph), however, is quirky, cooky, airy and playful and wants to be an actress…and that is all we know. These adjectives are not character traits or aspects of psychology in themselves but mere descriptions of demeanour. They do not imply objective, intent or mentality. There is a severe lack of character development, most notably with Claire, as I have implied above, but even with Fiona too. Coherent and linear progression insofar as character psychology and development are replaced with dance sequences, power poses and lengthy, meaningless dialogues. This must be re-examined. The characters are simply not well communicated at all. We are just left to accept what we are given – and we are given very little, indeed. Where performativity is concerned, Blake and Ralph certainly have adequate energy, and this is especially true of the comedic section of the text, but could do with a lot more, overall. Conviction and overall credibility is certainly lacking, and Blake needs to work a lot more on her diction, as she regularly slips up on her lines – something of which I am seeing a lot of late, for some reason. Then, we have the miming… This is completely unimaginative and repetitive, not to mention completely undecipherable. I have no idea why the creatives chose to bombard the set with so many props and pieces…only to have Blake and Ralph disregard them and mime! Use the props you have! One minute, Blake is using a real scraper to remove the ‘chewing-gum’ stuck to the underside of a real table, and the next, she is miming running her finger along a cabinet that does not exist. Just how dusty is this cabinet, I wonder, considering that the actresses each perform this exact action persistently throughout the first few scenes. Devoid of creativity. To use mime and physical action side by side like this is leads to a severely disjointed performance style. It is not until after Claire and Fiona share a dance routine that the comedy element is really amped up, and it is certainly effective. A growing sense of chaos, an absurd scenario, funny one-liners and lively characterisations. This section is wonderful. And I shall ignore the fact that we are asked as audience members to imagine that the box the two fight over is, in fact, a bottle and that it supposedly drops and smashes whilst still clearly in their hands. Visual cues like this involving mime are those I recommend be thoroughly reconsidered. Then, we have the serious dialogue that quickly ensues after this section. This scene is needlessly long and completely dampens our enjoyment of the comedy beforehand. Ill-conceived, it is lengthened by nonsensical pieces of dialogue such as when Claire explains why she planted the glove – an element, I should note, that I find far too predictable – and Fiona then asks her, ‘Why?’ …She just told you. Logical flow is inhibited like this for a prolonged sense of ‘drama’ that ought not to be. A few trivial notes: when Claire imagines herself as Mark’s alternate persona and says that perhaps he loves to perform in front of ‘a live audience’, the metatheatrical joke here of looking out knowingly to the audience is uncalled for; it needlessly defictionalises the text to no avail and is another example of stylistic disjointedness. Technical elements are overused, and as much as I personally enjoy the voiceover of the cat, again, it does not fit in stylistically with the rest of the performance. It deliberately, and erroneously, draws attention to the work we are forced to do as an audience to imagine that a cat is actually there – which is hard enough with Ralph’s, yet again, repetitive and unrealistic miming motions. Overall, this is a very confused dramatic text. When it aspires to be a comedy, it certainly delivers, but it is completely unsure of itself, as are its performers. “An ill-conceived and confused performance.”