Puddles is everything you should expect from Fat Git Theatre: it’s very funny, very, very weird, and very, very, very…original.
Puddles is about two girls who work in a call centre, Thelma (Emma Jane Denly) and Louise (Kate Pearse). Yeah, that’s their names. On one fateful day, their phone connections go haywire and they find themselves enacting typical scenarios they both encounter on the end of the phone: from lonely old women to the ‘heavy breathers’.
Written by Denly, she doesn’t waste words explaining what the audience are clever enough to work out for themselves, and this piece all the more touching because of it. Thelma and Louise struggle to break the barrier of direct contact stuck behind their phones all day, eventually toeing a dangerous line where it’s difficult to tell whether the hypothetical scenarios are actually very real to them. It’s not the ordinary way of going about confronting these things but Fat Git Theatre aren’t an ordinary company; I think it takes a leap of faith to invest into their slightly oddball world, but the reason you’re willing to do so is because the personalities they create on stage are so endearing.
Denly and Pearse’s impressions are flexible and unpredictable in this real laugh out loud production. The little looks between them are almost flirtatious, teasing the audience with the truth, but it’s the subtleties which lie behind the laughs which leave an impact. And notably, the capacity for humour in an awkward silence is just as funny as their dialogue, it’s a brave way to tackle the genre of comedy.
There isn’t much movement but it isn’t necessary; everything is performed parallel to one another, separated into two partitions, and everything is played out front, a difficult choice from director Jonathon Carr which is handled brilliantly. It communicates the breadth of the distance between these two people who are physically so close, and seemingly should be. There is a sense of fate in their meeting in this obscure way. And Denly and Pearse manage to play brilliantly against one another whilst barely making eye contact, they are an indomitable duo. They could be the next Two Ronnies.
All I can say is that if work were more like this, then it would be a lot more fun. But then again, not everyone at work is like Thelma and Louise.
