The Emma Packer Show is audaciously bad. Packer certainly doesn’t lack confidence; she commits to each of her character studies to the point of aggression. During this uncomfortable and unstimulating hour Packer presents us with: Beverly a tight-dressed Essex girl; Margaret a severe etiquette-mistress; Kay Greenwood a Daily Mail toting pensioner; Amy Jones a chav; and Susan Cavanaug, an Australian saleswoman.
These characters are wholly uncreative and show a staggering lack of imagination. Not only are the ideas for the characters themselves tired and clichéd but the writing itself lacks any three-dimensionality. Each conforms exactly to the stereotypical image we have of them, never challenging those fixed identities or ironically undermining them.
These characters are also joined by several others projected onto a screen whilst Packer makes her costume-changes. One is a librarian, who wears a buttoned up shirt and cardigan and speaks in a hesitant, raspy voice. This type of unfair stereotyping is possibly admissible in, say, a sketch show where the quick characterisation is a means to a different, funnier end, yet here it’s the end in itself. We’re shown the character for several minutes and then it leaves the stage or screen. Nothing more.
On top of this, the show is needlessly offensive. In one section, several audience members are branded ‘sluts’; other characters are variably homophobic and racist. Susan Cavanaugh even goes so far as suggesting that 9/11 might not have happened if the pilots had brought snacks packed in Tupperware. In better hands, this might have been part of an ironic insight into the offensive psyches of the characters, but here it feels woefully misjudged.
There’s an inconsistent amount of audience interaction throughout - whilst Packer’s early incarnations roam amongst the chairs confronting us and ad libbing, as the production continues she becomes more static. Rather than building to any particular narrative or conceptual conclusion, it just stops. In the first few minutes, Packer comes over to me, shines a light on my notebook and examines what I’d written so far. I’m only glad she didn’t ask me at the end.
