Guttermouth

If Shameless were a one man show, and featured more drum and bass, it would probably look something like this. Guttermouth is an innovative and fun production which uses contemporary verse, beat-boxing and physical theatre to take its audience on a journey through wit, grit, and pseudo-profundity.

Shewring, also the writer, produces a vivid image of a civilization which ‘tilts perpendicular’ through evocative poetry and energetic delivery.

Emerging from a wheelie bin, our narrator (Greg Shewring), the self-professed ‘mouth of the gutter’, takes his audience through the events of a heavy night out. Shewring, also the writer, produces a vivid image of a civilization which ‘tilts perpendicular’ through evocative poetry and energetic delivery. The rapid pace of his piece means that moments of silent or crudely un-poetic physical theatre are used to punctuate the atmosphere to wonderful comic effect. Occasionally, Shrewing takes a little too long over his words, and in these moments his tale loses its charge. However, nothing remains static for long in this production; his story and the surroundings his words create flit between beauty and grime, to the point that the two become at moments indistinguishable in their simultaneity.

Shewring’s compelling performance is supported by exceptionally tight tech. The soundtrack of drum and base, newly composed by Joe Newman, is atmospheric and infectious, and is used to inject Guttermouth with an incredible energy. Shewring adds to the soundscape with impressive beat-boxing and harmonica playing (sometimes doing both at the same time) as well as some really quite stunning a cappella singing. As with Shewring’s poetry, the music is able to crack open a calm moment with a cacophony of energy and grime, and equally able to instil unexpected stillness upon chaos.

Guttermouth is dirty and hilarious, and punctuated with moments of real poetic beauty. Its wry observations create something beautiful as they depict a state of things which is anything but pretty.