Theatre / weston studio
Review: Opal Fruits, The Weston Studio, Bristol Old Vic – ‘Fizzes with feeling and love and anger and silliness’
Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t say it.
I could feel my grip on this useless mantra – or its grip on me – fading fast. I was watching the engagement department of a London theatre cluelessly discuss the absence of working class people from their audiences.
In lofty tones they mourned the would-be salvation of these wretched souls; why don’t they come to see shows? Taking a moment or two to relish the moral panic on these ordinarily unflappable faces, I surrendered entirely my grip on the mantra, and found I had no volition: they do. They’re at the pantomime down the road.
is needed now More than ever
The incredulity with which they held my gaze stays with me still. It wasn’t enough that the working classes be engaged in culture; they must be engaged in high-culture (a repulsive phrase); culture as defined by us, the enlightened. Poor people have to be guided and coerced and shamed not just into consuming culture, but into consuming the right culture. They must be salvaged from their own bad taste.
Holly Beasley-Garrigan in Opal Fruits – photo: Alex Gent
Resisting – with great moral effort – employing the too-good-to-be-true reflection that Opal Fruits will cause a Star to Burst (or something), I’d like to talk about a show I saw on Thursday night at Bristol Old Vic.
The relationship between class and culture is one of those impossible subjects about which nobody has ever sounded intelligent. Holly Beasley-Garrigan engaged the topic with a courage and candour that trod faultlessly the narrow path through the complexity.
Consider the position: you’re working class. You’re an artist. You want to make art about being working class (logically enough). Powerful institutions offer you money because you’re working class. You doubt their motivations. You need to somehow make a show that a) tells truthfully your story; b) celebrates art; c) resists the trappings of so-called poverty porn; and d) demonstrates defiance against the apparent trendiness of being skint.
Holly Beasley-Garrigan in Opal Fruits – photo: Alex Gent
If it sounds hard, it’s harder than it sounds. Opal Fruits tips its glorious hat to the pitfalls of the subject and pirouettes through them.
The show fizzes with feeling and love and anger and silliness; it purposefully collides ostensibly disparate forms and makes beautiful the debris; it offers garage and ballet; it demonstrates with force and humour and confidence that banal conventions of ‘who can do what’ evaporate at the sound of a woman from a council estate in South London saying “why not“?
It made me feel ridiculous for wearing a suit. It made me wish I was brave enough to use my normal voice. It made me angry at the world. It filled me with affection and admiration for its creator. Opal Fruits made an ugly truth beautiful.
Holly Beasley-Garrigan in Opal Fruits – photo: Alex Gent
Opal Fruits is at The Weston Studio, Bristol Old Vic from September 7-10 at 8pm, with an additional 3pm matinee show on Saturday. Tickets are available at www.bristololdvic.org.uk.
Main photo: Samuel Donnelly
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