Theatre / Reviews
REVIEW: Project Dictator, The Weston Studio, Bristol Old Vic – ‘Excellent clowning but an uneven show’
Broadly speaking, there are two styles of clowning nowadays: modern clowns, with a rough and ready, punkish chaotic energy, and the classic red-nosed mime, often clad in the traditional white and black Pierrot costume. Project Dictator offers audiences both. This is not necessarily a good thing.
The main problem with this show is that it is two half-shows bolted together without elegance, coherence or resolution. The sum is considerably less than the potential of the parts. Both half-shows promise something exciting that is left unfulfilled.
The first half of this theatrical cut-and-shut is hardcore modern clowning. As Martin (Matthew Wells) drags us through a grindingly dull play about a politician’s rise to power, his sidekick Jeremy (Julian Spencer) rebels and takes over the show with the promise to make it “more fun”.
is needed now More than ever
The subsequent eruption of chaos has audience members hooting with laughter as Jeremy proves that the path to (absolute) power comes from being a charismatic showman.
The strength of the piece lies in the way in which the laughter and bombast draw the audience unwittingly and laughing down a path to the point where Jeremy can turn almost the entire auditorium against a single punter selected at random. Suddenly the laughter stops, and there is an uncomfortable silence as we realise how far the clever entertainer has brought us.
There are shades of Friedrich Durrenmatt and Max Frisch and their exploration of how ordinary people found themselves slithering almost unnoticed into supporting the Nazis. And there are scary parallels around where our modern politics could easily take us with the right funny, engaging strongman centre stage.
But instead of pushing on and seeing where this takes them (and us), Spooner and Wells abandon the stage and launch into a completely unrelated piece. The premise is a vague one, but consists of two clowns being forced by an anonymous loudspeaker voice to perform classic mime for unexplained reasons. With whitened faces and white Pierrot costumes, they deliver some excellent displays of creating substance out of nothing that would bring tears of pride to any mime teacher’s eye.
But there is little clear story around why they’re doing it, or why they end up clown-fighting. And the final scene in which the clowns and their accompanist rebel against Big Brother should, perhaps, feel uplifting, but instead has a bleak vibe around the futility of protest in the face of authoritarianism. Yes, they resisted and made a noise – but did they win? Probably not.
From Egypt to Belarus, we have seen in recent years that noisy protest does not result in any tangible change, however we might wish that we lived in a properly ordered world where it would.
So with one half that fails to have the courage of its convictions and a second half that lacks a tangible premise, Project Dictator offers audiences an unsatisfying night out, despite the undeniably admirable clowning skills.
It’s all the more disappointing because the theatre company Rhum + Clay’s previous show Testosterone was genuinely fantastic: an exploration of (transgender) masculinity which was both incredibly funny and very moving. More importantly, it told one consistent story all the way through to its powerful climax. If only the company had had the same faith to fully develop either of the two shows contained within Project Dictator.
Project Dictator is at The Weston Studio, Bristol Old Vic on October 30-November 4 at 8pm, with an additional 3pm matinee show on Saturday. Tickets are available at www.bristololdvic.org.uk.
All photos: Cesare de Giglio
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