Boy oh boy was my disappointment swift.
This show is awfully awful, like a monument to the monster of the
theatrical ego, and everyone involved really needs to have a very
serious word with themselves.
To start with, the two lead actors, Mat
Fraser, and American burlesque performer Julie Atlas Muz came on and introduced
themselves, as themselves. Now, in theatre there's this thing called
the fourth wall. It's the like the invisible tv screen between the
actors and the audience, by which the actors pretend the audience
aren't there, and thus get on with the story. Sometimes,
actors like to break the fourth wall and interact with the audience.
The first few times I saw this in the theatre, I thought it was cute.
After a few more times, I started wanting to shove my hand in the
actors' faces and shout 'Get back behind the fourth wall!'. Also, the
phrase 'artistic practice' was invoked, which further moved me to
violence.
Anyway, they then started to tell the
story with shadow-puppetry. That was fine, if tedious. Then the
female lead came on, in character, being Beauty, entering the beast's
castle. With the aid of two puppeteers, they
seemed to be trying to recreate some famous, entirely fantastic,
scenes in Jean Cocteau's black and white film, La Belle et La Bete.
They had even taken some lines of dialogue directly from it. Then Mat
Fraser, as the Beast, appeared. Now, I understand what they were
trying to do. The Beast in the story of Beauty and the Beast is
hiding from society, because he isn't like everyone else, he's not
human, and he's not normal. So by having a disabled actor play that
role, you're asking people to think about how people regard
disability in that way. The thing is, is disability beastly? I am not convinced it's a working metaphor, personally.
They then told the rest of the story,
occasionally jumping in and out of the effing fourth wall, to tell us
about their relationship in real life. They involved the puppeteers,
to play themselves, which was hideously awkward. They got their kit
off. They kept it off. And off. And off, thus rendering it completely
uninteresting, and unsexy, as they just wandered round the stage in
the buff. They ate fruit in an allegedly sexy manner. It all
descended into a simulated sex scene which went on for what felt like
hours, and made me realise that there is nothing more unerotic than
watching two practised performers writhe gymnastically in front of a
hundred slightly embarrassed English people. I was relieved when the
puppeteers got naked as well, as at least I some different arses to
look at. The only thing I could find to recommend was that everyone
involved clearly had real pubes, which I haven't seen in public for
ages.
The show wouldn't settle into any one thing: it wasn't
exactly meaningful, about an issue; it wasn't exactly a
comedy. It wasn't dark enough, or mysterious enough, or shocking
enough, although I am sure it would have liked to have been all these
things.
I felt they were trying to poke
holes in a taboo that didn't exist, and congratulating themselves
about it.
The thing is, Beauty and the Beast is
quite a dark, sexy and disturbing story anyway, unless you've only
seen the Disney version. In La Belle et La Bete, made in the 1940s,
the Beast is a kind of a cat human. The cat-human is so disturbingly
attractive that when he turns back into a human, you're kind of disappointed.
And if you do want a kinky, transgressive version of the story, I
suggest you watch Secretary, which is poignant and
moving. Both these films are available on dvd for less than a
tenner, either would be a better night's entertainment than this
awful pig's ear of a theatre piece.
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