The blurb describes this performance as a ‘sobering, gloriously juvenile collision between foresight and hindsight’. Sounds... fun!
We meet three children dressed in school uniforms, who sit in front of us in a row to tell us what their fathers have been saying during their respective political debates and speeches. We can deduce from this and from the colours of their ties (red, blue, yellow), that we’re meeting the children of the three main party leaders.
The children speak directly to the audience, in turns, repeating what their fathers may (or may not) have said during their speeches. Each sentence is prefixed ‘My father says...’ or ‘My father only last week has met...’.
Disassociated phrases are spoken with no emotion – perhaps echoing how the promises, ideals and tales, that the ‘characters’ have heard their fathers speak during the course of the 2010 election sounded.
Tim Crouch’s text and the actors’ delivery captures the lack of emotion with which such stock phrases are spouted; the dullness of the content of the phrases, and the lack of response or listening with which each statement is met.
The performers know their lines, know when to deliver them, how long to pause. They also hold the audience’s gaze with calm wide-eyed innocence that had the potential to move. The juxtaposition between the deadpan delivery, the faux portent of the content, and the age of the performers set laughter off in the audience.
They sit, saying their phrases, for 15 minutes, and then, at the risk of spoiling the ending for you, they get up and walk out.
I noticed no attempt to elicit either a laugh or any emotion from the audience, nor any invitation to be transported into any story other than that three young automatons were telling us things that they didn’t seem to either believe or disbelieve. It was all very neutral, for me to make of it what I will, with no moves to make me ‘feel’ anything.
I also noticed no collision, except between my own hopes for sobering theatre, and this performance. It was juvenile in that the three actors were juveniles. It was glorious in that it’s great to see young people on stage, saying absurd things to adults for 15 mins.
As a commentary on how young people feel lied to by their adult leaders, and on how the inner children, of each of the leaders considered, have become dead mechanical voice boxes, it has a point. Is it well made? It reminded me of my own boring rhetoric; my own emotional repression, and my own struggle to relate to others. Gee, Thanks!
