Ovalhouse, London
***
Imagine a quivering,
barefoot, genteel Joyce Grenfell narrating her way apologetically through a bizarre
Kafkaesque nightmare somewhere in a futurist world dominated by electronics,
and you will get the flavour of Emma Adams’s one-woman show Freakoid.
It is billed as a
dystopian comedy and foul-mouthed queer allegory — ‘a future queer love affair’
— but it plays out as nothing of the sort. It sits more recognisably in the
tradition of time-worn British comedy of bizarre juxtaposition and homely conspiratorial
gossip with a nod perhaps, at the end, as it shifts into another gear, to the
disturbing confessional monologues of Tim Crouch. The word lesbian is mentioned
only once by the main character and in a very non P.C sort of way. There is
nothing particularly queer, foul-mouthed or even dystopian about any of it.
We enter the
auditorium as Emma .004, a trembling grey-haired middle-aged woman is typing
furiously away at a battered old typewriter, surrounded by wrecked and broken
hard drives and defunct computers. Like the old typewriter she is a survivor, a
‘bio’ in a ‘second fenced’ futurist world of android and bio-androids: the
‘freakoid’ of the title.
In a series of
unconnected scenes, interspersed by baleful video reports which get ever more
bizarrely apocalyptic, she appears to be interrogated by an unseen and unheard
electronic presence. She confesses her human story - ‘festering’ is the new
futurist name for original autonomous thinking - as she remembers her friends
daring to speak out against the new oppressive regime and telling us what
became of them. She remembers her grandmother who fell in love with a hoover
and spawned many baby hoovers until she and all the hoovers committed suicide
in a swing park. The invasion of the electronic devices is recreated on the
interspersing videos (photographer and video editor Maria Spadfora) but these
tend to slow up the action instead of developing it - although I did rather
like the skateboarding electric iron.
At times it seems as
if two separate plays are being performed alternately. As if to recognise this,
Adams gives up and steps out of character halfway through and appeals to the
audience to take part and save the show. Letters drop down on wires and land in
the laps of unsuspecting audience members. She awaits a phone call and asks for
the letters to be read out. Sequences like this are diverting and funny if ultimately
baffling and add nothing to our understanding as to what is going on. The piece
eventually gets lost up its own portentous and predictable story-telling, and a
few songs later, and a lurch into the Tim Crouch-style horror confessional (though
laced with humour) of incestuous goings on among the now traumatised bios, we
are none the wiser.
Freakoid is slickly directed by Sarah
Applewhite and undeniably entertaining. But I found it bizarre rather than
queer, nonsensical rather than surreal, comical rather than satirical, and myopian
rather than dystopian. There are some nice songs recalling a rosy-hued
traditional England which could have been written by Julian Slade and Dorothy
Reynolds and introduce moments of kitsch pathos.
Emma Adams is a fine
comic actress, composer, musician and singer in the great British tradition of
Beryl Reid, Grenfell herself, and perhaps, more pertinently, Hermione Gingold. Like
them, she has a warm and winning stage presence and, despite the disappointing predictability
of this material, I look forward to her next show.
This production runs until 9 March 2013.
For more information: http://www.ovalhouse.com/whatson/detail/freakoid
@Ovalhouse @Freakoid1
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