Author Archives: Dorothy Max Prior

About Dorothy Max Prior

Dorothy Max Prior is the editor of Total Theatre Magazine, and is also a performer, writer, dramaturg and choreographer/director working in theatre, dance, installation and outdoor arts. Much of her work is sited in public spaces or in venues other than regular theatres. She also writes essays and stories, some of which are published and some of which languish in bottom drawers – and she teaches drama, dance and creative non-fiction writing. www.dorothymaxprior.com

A response to Aqui e Agora / Here and Now

A response to Os Bem-Intencionados / The Well-Intentioned, Brazilian company LUME Teatro’s new work in progress…

We are called into the ‘green room’ at the Sede de LUME – the company’s rehearsal and workshop space – and see a number of tables furnished with lime green satinette cloths, arranged in a circle around a dancefloor. In one corner is a trio of musicians, and in another a cocktail bar bearing a jumble of bottles and glasses. The bar has something of a late 1960s/early 1970s look. LUME actors are in the space – some in character and dressed accordingly (with that 60s/70s look also coming through into the costumes, which have something of a psychedelic vibe), some in a half-dressed state, and neutral mode. I am directed to a table near to the musicians, and sit down to watch the arrival of the other ‘dancehall guests’ – at this work-in-progress run it is only members of the immediate LUME family who are attending. As the band strikes up a lively dance tune, and the actors circulate, greeting us and placing beer bottles and glasses on our tables, we eagerly await the start of the night’s entertainment.

It is Monday 21 June and I have just arrived in Barão Geraldo – I have come from Rio where, by coincidence, I have just presented a show that is also an interactive piece set in a mock-dancehall – so I am very keen to see what LUME have done with a similar starting point. Inevitably there are crossover points, in particular in the breaking down of the actor-audience divide and the play on dancehall stereotypes, influenced in my case by the film Le Bal, and perhaps in LUME’s case by the Brazilian film that similarly investigates a dancehall’s life, Chega de Saudade – and we can note here that Os Bem-Intencionados will premiere in the glorious União Fraterna dancehall in Sao Paulo where that film was shot.

But Os Bem-Intencionados is essentially a very different beast to these other dancehall investigations, not least in its central preoccupation with the question of what it means to be an artist – our seven LUME actors playing a bunch of dancehall regulars who each have aspirations to artistic recognition and stardom. Collectively, they are a group of well-intentioned wannabes. They have missed out on the big time, but haven’t given up yet – their moment may yet be to come. Os Bem-Intencionados explores the desperation of the obsession with fame that pervades our current times; and ironically reflects on what it means to be a performing artist.

The show is very different to other theatre work I have previously seen by the company, and is presented as a collaboration with director and dramaturg Grace Passô. I am pleased to discover through this and subsequent viewings that despite being (in some aspects) a departure from familiar territory for LUME it is, no doubt about it, a LUME Teatro show…

The piece has a fair amount of spoken text which, with my limited knowledge of Portuguese, I struggle to understand – but it is a work rich in physical action, visual imagery and music, so plenty to appreciate. And I would also argue that much of what we understand about a given character or situation, in real life or in theatre, is perceived as much through the semiotics of vocal tone, phrasing, and gesture than through the semantics of the spoken language. So I feel that even without seeing a translation of the script, I have really experienced the work presented.

And so, on with the show…

There’s some minutes of general ambience and scene-setting, the music playing and the dancehall regulars (LUME actors) circulating – inviting guests in and making them welcome. Then, a change of tone and Ricardo Puccetti takes the floor. There is a man, he says, sitting here at a table in the dancehall (he points to a bare space), who is raising his arm to attract the waiter’s attention, impatient but perhaps too self-effacing or nervous to really insist that he gets this attention. Jesser de Souza skids across the floor bearing a table aloft, places it in the space, and with a flourish adds a tablecloth and a chair. Ricardo is still in storyteller mode, holding his arm aloft in an illustrative manner, but at some point over the next few minutes he dons a multi-coloured chiffon shirt and a wig to become that tall and lanky and somewhat nervous man with the raised arm, Márcio Martin. Meanwhile, Jesser’s character Gonçalves Rodrigüez – an over-cheery friend-to-all-the-world who desperately wants to have a good time, but is harbouring an inner melancholy – juggles a flurry of thrown bottles to set upon the table. He wears a red suit and a rather loud shirt, and also sports a wig. Márcio and Gonçalves, so different in size and stature, make for a comical pairing, played upon with a clown-like intention by the two actors.

One by one the other dancehall regulars arrive to sit at the table. There’s Nataly Menuzes (Ana Cristina Colla, resplendent in a curly blonde wig) for whom ‘beleza e tudo’ (‘beauty is everything’). She’s a wide-mouthed, wide-eyed, curvaceous lady who laughs loudly, gesticulates wildly, and flirts madly with all and sundry. Maria Alice Elise (Raquel Scott Hirson) is a girlish woman for whom the word ‘kooky’ could have been invented – a scatty whirlwind of a person (dressed in shades of pink and purple, with hipster shorts and halter-neck top exposing her bare midriff, a jaunty cap on her head) who is constantly checking her mobile, talking in a simpering sing-song voice, scoffing chocolate bars, and tossing her shoulder-length locks petulantly.

Maria Alice’s friend Melice-Z (Naomi Silman) gets dragged onstage prostate, by her legs – as it would seem is often the case, she is too incapacitated by drink and drugs to get there under her own steam. Having arrived just about in one piece, she is propped up on a chair only to almost instantly collapse in a heap, an elongated arm trailing from the chair, with a cigarette dangling from between her fingertips. It’s hard not to think of Amy Winehouse. Rodrigo Omett’o (Renato Ferracini) is another wigged man – a rock-n-roll wannabe, tight-trousered, furrow-browed and brooding, eying up the ladies with what he hopes is an alluring come-on. A little apart from the rest of the group is Dagoberto Leão (Carlos Simioni), an older man, handsome and aloof, dressed in a white suit, flowered shirt, and Panama hat. Dagoberto seems to pride himself (like the lion he is named after) on being king of the pack, but chooses for the most part not to get too drawn into the dancehall shenanigans. He often stays at his own separate table, reading a magazine, ignoring his colleagues. It would seem that for him, his own fantasy world (be it sexual, or the lust for fame) is more important than the sordid realities of daily life. Dagberto has a mic in front of him, and he soundchecks his voice, asking us if we can hear him. He reflects on the eccentricities of his colleagues, and sings us an opening song. We are readily drawn into the world of the well-intentioned, where fantasy and reality collide with a bang…

The show is divided into two halves, with an interval (or perhaps an ‘interlude’ or even a false interval – more on that later!) dividing up the two very different ‘acts’. In part one, spoken text plays a larger part as scenes are set and characters explored – although as I reflected earlier it is arguable what proportion of any ‘story’ is learnt through the language of words. For my part, there is a little too much text – and I am willing to accept that it may well seem this way because I don’t understand enough of the language spoken to really appreciate the words, but I do also feel that often the physical actions, gestures and visual images are doing the job well enough anyway. Part two sees a stronger reliance on the more ‘usual’ LUME non-verbal languages of movement and ensemble physical theatre. In both sections, the live music and song provides a throughline.

On this first run that I see, I find myself drawn most strongly to the Márcio and Nataly characters (as played by Ricardo and Cris). Their stories seem to be at the heart of the action – and without offering any ‘spoilers’, the traditional Aristotelian theatre requirements of conflict, denouement, and resolution seem most clearly played out in their journeys.

I get to see a second run on the following night (Tuesday 22 June), and it is interesting to note how different the show feels on this occasion. Partly of course because any live show or rehearsal is very different on successive nights; partly because the actors are now more in the flow of the work (Monday’s run was the first after a long break in rehearsal schedule); partly because interesting changes have been made, including to the ‘interval’ dilemma – which I am coming to, I promise; partly because I am sat at a different table, so have (literally) a different view; partly because I now have some knowledge of the piece, a grasp of its overall shape, so am taken by different aspects. So on Tuesday night, I find myself – for whatever reasons – drawn most strongly to the enigmatic machismo of Rodrigo (Renato’s character), and the flighty Maria Alice (played by Raquel).

Melice-Z (Naomi) and Gonçalves (Jesser) are consistently strong presences on both nights – although Jesser’s Rodrigues is on particularly good form on Tuesday. Simi’s Dagoberto is hard to grasp as a character – he is, in any case, pitched as someone a little apart from the rest of the dancehall regulars – yet is obviously the ‘glue’ that holds the piece together through song and commentary, and whose own personal journey is perhaps the most tragic (although bathos and pathos might be more appropriate terms than ‘tragedy’).

There is a wealth of imagery to reflect on after the runs. On night one, I am sat at a table at which a wild massacre of a bunch of roses occurs – on the second night I take voyeuristic pleasure in watching someone else jump in terror as a knife flashes past them. I enjoy the way objects are used in the piece – that knife has many and various roles: chopping the flowers, drawing a sinister outline round a fallen body (itself a repeated visual/physical motif), and stabbing a polystyrene wig-head holder with venom. Mirrors, large and small, are important to the piece, as are shoes, handbags (and their contents) and jewellery. And those wigs are used almost like masks – donned and doffed to put on or take off a character; to play with notions of the real and the artifice; to explore notions of exposure and embarrassment. Drinks bottles and glasses (tall, small, plain and coloured) act as more than props, becoming players in the action and signifiers of the characters’ states-of-mind and intentions. They also act as conductors, relaying energy between the worlds of the actors and the audience: the beer bottles placed on our tables contain real beer (or even cachaca for one lucky table!), and we are encouraged to drink throughout the show; bottles are thrown and caught, crashed into and broken; characters play out their pensiveness with circling fingers that set the glasses singing; and a very lovely scene exploring Marcio’s social inadequacies is played out with a bottle of champagne, in an interaction with a female audience member, who is cast as the object of his desperate romantic desires. Inevitably, the flirtation backfires as Marcio screws up, the wrong words escaping from his lips – a moment of desperate humiliation that sets him on course for an explosion of pent-up frustration…

As for the physical language of the piece, there is much that would be familiar to LUME audiences and some that is perhaps less familiar! A scene that depicts some of the characters at some indeterminate point in time in the future, uses costume and props (a terrifying Botox-faced transparent mask, a back-to-front jacket with shortened arms clutching a pair of champagne flutes, a large woven basket thrown over a head, a veil covering a bent-over body) in a beautifully stylised dance depicting ageing bodies, fading glamour and the endless repetition of this hedonistic lifestyle (’You’re are so repetitive, so repetitive, repetitive!’ screams Nataly at an earlier point in the show – setting up an interest in repetition as both dramatic theme and theatrical device).

In other scenes the familiar LUME physical theatre ‘toolbox’ is employed to great effect – the use of different levels in the space (a woman on top of a stepladder; a woman crawling along the ground); the ‘panther’ roda or circle as things go a little too far, and one character is stripped of her dignity by a grunting and growling herd; the use of the ‘hero and chorus’ technique, for example in a scene where Raquel’s character receives an important phone call offering her an interview or audition, and the whole group shuffle round her, agog for more information. Gestural movements are repeated and enlarged upon from one section to another: that desperate and hopeful raised arm; or a baying laugh exposing wolf-like teeth; or a stifled Geisha-like giggle with hand to mouth). Popular dance moves – from samba and rumba bolero to tango and tap – are deconstructed and stylised, with one delightful moment being the terribly-tall and lanky, high-heeled (and inevitably unstable) Melice-Z (Naomi) and the dapper and fast-footed, but far shorter, Gonçalves (Jesser) dissolving to the floor in an undignified heap, as what should have been a passionate Rudolf Valentino style tango oversway goes a little wrong…

The music is a key element: the trio of live musicians (keyboard, accordion and percussion) keep things moving with a swing, under the expert leadership of musical director Marcello Onofri; providing accompaniment to both the physical action, and the torch songs sung by Dagoberto – which include a rather splendid rendition of Frank Sinatra’s My Way.

Oh and that interval question! It was reflected on after the second run, and also in a rehearsal I attended the day after. Apparently, in an earlier incarnation, the company had played with the idea of two separate acts in this 120-minute show, with a clear-cut interval (announced by the band leader). For these two runs, this had been abandoned in favour of a more fluid sort of quasi-interval, with some of the actors staying in the space, but the audience free to leave (to smoke or use the bathroom). The outcome of the discussion and reflection would seem to be that in its next incarnation, the company will play with the notion of a ‘false interval’ or interlude, in which the band take a break and recorded music plays, but actors and audience stay in the space, with the actors/characters exploring a different relationship to space and audience in that interlude.

Sadly, I will not be around to see this next stage – but I return to England happy to have at least witnessed the story so far, in both the very early rehearsals I sat in on in late March, and these far more advanced ones in late June. I have been very glad to have had the privilege of attending these rehearsals and runs – and to have played a small part in the development of the show by providing a few short dance classes in ballroom dancing and tap!

Rehearsals have stopped for now, the company and director busy with other projects, but on 12 July they resume work. And on 27 and 28 July 2012, Os Bem-Intencionados will premiere at that aforementioned beautiful old dancehall in Sao Paulo, before settling in to a two-month run throughout August and September at SESC Pompeia (also in Sao Paulo).

One of the things I felt seeing those runs on two nights in succession is that this is a show that could well be seen a number of times. The different viewpoint depending on where you sit, and the small personal interactions between actors and audience that change from night to night, make for a potentially radically different experience of the show. And there is so much to take in that just once is not enough. So if you have the opportunity, I urge you to go and see the show not just once, but on more than one occasion! There will be plenty to entertain you as you drink in these stories from the frontline of frustrated romantic intention; plenty of food for thought in the reflections on thwarted artistic ambition; and plenty to nourish your heart and soul in this expose of the fears, failures and frailties of these seven characters.

We are all, we realise, like them – all well intentioned, all doing our best in this dance of life, despite the obstacles on the path. And we all, ultimately, do it ‘our way’.

h ttp://www.lumeteatro.com.br/

Théâtre du Soleil: Les Naufragés du Fol Espoir (Aurores) / The Castaways of the Fol Espoir (Sunrises)

‘It has taken 48 years for the Edinburgh International to bring us here,’ says Ariane Mnouchkine (founder-director of Theatre du Soleil, legend in her own lifetime) before the show, on this their last performance of a sold-out five-day run.

And we can see why: it’s a tall order, bringing this lot over the water. A cast of – how many? 35 or more? They can’t all fit across the breadth of this enormous stage to take their bow – and tons, and I mean tons, of kit (the great wall of wooden packing cases stamped with their name form a barrier between the bar area and auditorium in this great cavernous hangar of a space, close to Edinburgh Airport). All in the service of an epic show that is about an amateur theatre company, who are also cooks and waiters in a restaurant cum dancehall, making a film that is loosely based on a lost Jules Verne story of a voyage to the freezing South Atlantic in search of – well, quite what is hard to say. In search of the dawn of a new age as the world enters the twentieth century, in search of the noble savage of South America, in search of hidden treasure (gold, oil, minerals), in search of modernism, in search of Darwinism, in search of Marxism, in search of feminism, in search of an exposition of Queen Victoria’s brand of imperialism, in search of an explanation of the madness of waging war over lands that hardly seem worth fighting over (The Falklands, say), in search of the reasons for the assassination of Archduke Franz-Ferdinand and the beginning of the Great War, in search of… It’s exhausting just thinking about it, never mind watching it. The show is devised by the company and, as the programme notes put it, the script ‘half-written’ by leading feminist writer, philosopher and theoretician Hélène Cixous. (Warning! Could contain didactic and polemical tracts loosely disguised as theatre writing – and it does.)

I’d like to say it was worth all the effort, but sadly it didn’t rock my boat, and I felt a little exhausted by it all – despite admiring the evident theatre-making skill, despite knowing that I was watching a truly legendary company, despite the obvious enthusiasm of the audience, who rose to give them a standing ovation at the end of the four-hour marathon. Yep, four hours, sitting in uncomfortable metal seats, with one short interval.

So, how does it all play out? My favourite bit is the start. As we enter the auditorium, we pass along a corridor one ‘wall’ of which is a stretch of lace curtains, behind which we see a scene that is perhaps how we might imagine the backstage at the Chat Noir Parisian cabaret circa 1890. Ladies in white petticoats and bloomers pull on their stockings and boots; gentlemen with twirly moustaches paint their eyebrows and rouge their cheeks. There are some nice anachronistic reminders that this isn’t 1914 in the plastic bottles of water and modern brands of make-up remover. Past the ‘dressing rooms’, stage left is a room half-shielded by a wooden wall and half in full view, filled with a marvellous collection of musical instruments: stringed things of every size and type, drums, zithers, tubas, horns, full-size pianos and toy-pianos. A rotund man with a white bushy beard is standing guard over his treasure. (I presume him to be the company’s musical director Jean-Jacques Lemêtre, playing Monsieur Camille Berard the musician, but I might be wrong.)

All great so far! I suppose this start leads me to expect that this might be a promenade piece, but no – we are sat in our seats and there we must stay. The stage area is massive and – a nice touch – there are also lighting towers to each side that are climbed at regular intervals by characters designated as lighting operators for the ‘filming’. And so the story begins, the story of the making of the film, a film directed by Monsieur Tomasso (who plays many parts in his own film) with assistant director Madame Gabriel also taking on the role of camera-woman, making for some very nice swinging-around-in-a-harness opportunities. So yes, there are characters playing characters playing characters. There are clownish waiters who act as commentators on the action, also providing eccentric dance interludes, and there is – just to add another layer – a pre-recorded soundtrack in voiceover (in English, thankfully).

As each scene is shot, painted backdrops of Arctic wastes or Victorian drawing-rooms or cabins in the countryside are bussed onto the stage by bustling actors/waiters, carriages or chairs or mock-ups of the boat brought into play, snow or wind machines switched on and off, and Foley sound effects created for the ‘film’.

Poor theatre this is not. It might even be the ‘theatre of scene shifters’ that Jacques Copeau strove so hard to eliminate. I suppose the counterargument is that all this ‘stuff’ is being done with ironic intention, a kind of commentary on the complexity of this sort of creative endeavour.

It is of course all absolutely beautiful. There are some gorgeous tableaux – groups of actors poised at the helm of the Fol Espoir, or trekking across the Antarctic in ludicrous slow-mo, walking against the wind. There are some lovely little visual jokes that will appeal to contemporary theatre-makers: every scene shot contains at least one puppet bird on a rod, and the cry of ‘Ou est l’oiseau?’ is a constant refrain. The shipwreck scene with a miniature boat decorated with fairy lights floating in a tub is delightful, and brings a smile to my lips. The onstage musician is a genius – I happily watch him when I get bored of the inevitable cranking up of the snow machine, his tinkling on his piano and banging of his drums and gongs and bells, onstage or just out of sight, is constantly entertaining.

There are a lot of lovely things here, but four hours’ worth of material? I don’t think so. Perhaps if they had thought through the surtitle business, I might have enjoyed it more. This was an odd one: as what we were watching being created was a silent film, title-cards were used – except they weren’t. What we had instead were the surtitle screens also used for the title-card text, as well as both lots of text being projected onto the scenery and backdrops. The company seemed to feel that just changing the font was good enough to distinguish between the two forms of textual content, or maybe they thought it was an interesting postmodern provocation to mix the two up, but to my mind it was a dramaturgical boo-boo – totally confusing, and as I was in one of the front rows, to the side of and parallel with the main surtitle screen which I thus couldn’t see, I had to resign myself to trying to read white words often projected onto an off-white or pale-blue backdrop, mostly illegible. I gave up after a while and just watched the actors making nice moving pictures, but as the text was evidently supremely important, I feel a little bit cheated of one key element of the show.

It was great to have the opportunity to see such a legendary company, this being my first encounter with Théâtre du Soleil, who are rarely programmed in the UK despite their iconic status – but I get the feeling that I have perhaps missed the Mnouchkine boat.

www.theatre-du-soleil.fr

Théâtre du Soleil: Les Naufragés du Fol Espoir (Aurores) / The Castaways of the Fol Espoir (Sunrises)

www.theatre-du-soleil.fr

Bootworks Theatre: 30 Days to Edinburgh

‘A Spaceman, a Cowboy and a Disco-Dancer are going on a journey. A journey undertaken in the spirit of discovery. There’s a gig that they’ve got to get to and they’re the performers. The gig’s 468 miles away and they’ve only their feet to get them there. This will be 30 Days to Edinburgh.’

And they did it! James Baker, Rob Jude Daniels and Andy Roberts – collectively known as Bootworks – walked the whole length of the country to get from Chichester in Sussex to Edinburgh on the very last day of the Fringe, just in time to present the show made en route. In fact, they got here early and had to dawdle for the last day before making their triumphant journey down the Royal Mile singing The Proclaimers’ I Would Walk 500 Miles (inevitably, I suppose).

I’m in seeing another show and sadly miss them arriving at the door of Summerhall at 7pm. By 7.30, they are hanging out in the corridor chatting to mates. I give James (aka Spaceman) a hug – it’s odd hugging a guy in a slinky silver jumpsuit laden down with a giant backpack.

We file into one of Summerhall’s lecture theatre spaces, three mics placed in the stage area, and the Bootworks boys take to the stage, take off their backpacks and begin…

It’s (unsurprisingly) a bit of a ramshackle performance. Notebooks in hand, fluffs on the mic, lots of in-jokes. All-in-all it’s like a cross between stand-up comedy and performance poetry, with a few bits of mildly entertaining physical action chucked in. There’s a very funny failure to erect a tent (some children in the audience are called upon to help). There are jokes aplenty about Spaceman’s dangly bits, clearly outlined in the slinky silver suit, and about his bad poetry. Disco Dancer (Rob) is honest about the fact that he has found it all a bit hard going – he hasn’t had sex in ages, and his feet hurt, really hurt. The Cowboy (Andy) channels the energy of those that have gone before him: Jon Voigt in Midnight Cowboy, and John Wayne in – well, in everything John Wayne has been in, which is a lot of cowboy movies.

We get a whole lot of numbers and lists (meals eaten, animals spotted, towns passed through, pubs visited, constellations gazed at) and a fair few namechecks – Josh and Hannah who phoned them regularly from Edinburgh (there was a mobile number given on cards placed next to the Lego map in the hallway at Summerhall that showed their daily progress with little flags); Mim who called from a train going through Cumbria mid-August, saying she was probably very near them right now, and they were all looking at the same sunset; Winnebago Jeremy and the various nice landladies whose cafes provided them with life-saving All-Day Breakfasts. There’s quite a bit about food, and I particularly like a eulogy to the great British tradition of the Ice Cream van (‘Knobbly Bobbly! Mr Whippy with two flakes!’) There’s a lot about blisters and boots, about moments of friendship and fights, about torches and tents. Andy reads a letter composed en route: ‘Dear Vango, I quite like your sleeping bags, but please could you stop making tents?’

There are some nice moments of rhythm and repetition in the spoken text (the refrain of ‘We could have taken the train/car/plane,’ for example). Some of the observations from the journey and the recalling of encounters along the way are witty and interesting, but rather too many are not particularly inspiring, and there are more than a few dismissive comments about towns encountered along the way – although our lads are always keen to emphasise that ‘the people are nice’.

A criticism that has to be made is that it is all geared towards those in the know: the family and friends who have followed the progress along the way. A posse of international delegates in to see the show are completely bemused. Essentially, this is raw, undigested data, and life takes a lot more mulching down to become meaningful theatre. Compare and contrast to (say) Forced Entertainment’s The Travels, which similarly uses tales of journeying and random encounters across the UK – but which took many years of writing and editing and theatrical crafting to become the great show it is.

Which brings me to say that I feel that the choice to do the show was a mistake. The 30 days on the road was the show – a beautiful, wonderful thing, in a noble tradition of walking-as-art that includes the work of Janet Cardiff, Richard Long, and Wrights & Sites. The interaction with people from afar (by phone call, text, Facebook, or Twitter) was of course an intrinsic part of this. It is a wonderful achievement that is somehow lessened by being reduced to an hour-long hurriedly constructed theatre show. A celebratory welcoming party would perhaps have been enough to close the 30 days.

Should the company feel that a theatre show could emerge from the project, then that could be worked on with the sort of rigour and structured process that is needed to create an hour-long theatre piece, and what would emerge would be something of a standard worthy of Bootwork’s wonderful track-record.

But as said, I don’t feel that the theatre show is at all necessary in any case. 30 Days to Edinburgh was an extraordinary performance art project, a beautiful challenge to the Edinburgh bubble – but the art happened before they stepped into that lecture room. Nothing more was needed.

www.bootworkstheatre.co.uk

Tom Marshman: Legs 11

In which Tom Marshman takes us on a journey from Leg Shame to Leg Fame, telling the story of how he survived the pain and trauma of varicose veins, gaining a place in the Pretty Polly Legs 11 final. Along the way, we get an investigation of gender expectations, and liberation from those expectations, in this gentle, poignant and amusing performance piece.

The show is in the solo performance confessional-autobiographical tradition, using spoken text (written by the artist), film, song, and embodied actions. It sits between live art and theatre, perhaps more of a live art piece by most people’s definitions – Tom is himself, not acting a part – but it has a good dramaturgical structure, respecting the need for something presented in a theatre space, with a captive audience, to have the necessary pace and rhythm.

As we arrive in the space we see Tom pottering around, dressed in an old-gold tux and a pair of star-spangled tights. We are welcomed and invited to tie together a colourful selection of tights (sparkly, fishnet, bisque, American tan) to make a line, later used for an on-the-floor tightrope walk. The autobiographical texts are presented in various ways. There’s regular storytelling, as when we learn of Tom’s mother’s job in a supermarket, eschewing the spam and beans to promote brands such as Del Monte fruit cocktail, Martini Rosso, and – yes – Pretty Polly: ‘You’ll never catch a Pretty Polly girl in trousers!’ There’s a different kind of performance mode in the poetic ‘And when my legs were five… seven… eleven…’ sequence in which we get a quick run-through of Tom’s childhood and adolescence with moments of shame, embarrassment, self-awareness and emerging personal identity exposed and honoured (his legs running away from home aged five, red vanity case in hand; his legs having their trousers stolen at a party aged fifteen, resulting in a trip home in his Dad’s car with legs cocooned caterpillar-like in a sleeping bag). There’s ironic film clips (Busby Berkeley choreographed legs, and – inevitably – vintage Pretty Polly ads) and there are songs sung (these a little shaky it has to be said).

The adult legs have a tale to tell of pain and medicalisation and recovery, and we get the varicose veins story told with plastic drinking straws wedged down into Tom’s tights (the straws a nice shade of turquoise plastic, fitting in well with the red-and-turquoise theme throughout).

And so to the central story: when Pretty Polly announced that they needed a new pair of legs to represent them, Tom thought ‘I have a new pair of legs!’ and thus began his quest. We are now entering something resembling reality TV territory as we learn of the contest, the shortlist (the only man amongst a bevy of lovely-legged girls) and the outcome of the final – a tale told with suitably dramatic pauses and film interludes interspersed throughout. real6.ch Audience members get invited up for some Martini Rosso, drunk through straws (yes, those straws – still attached to Tom) and somewhere along the way, there’s a very nice section where the audience’s dancing legs are filmed and the film is played back to us.

Tom seems a little shy and unsure of himself at times, but this just adds to his charm. A very enjoyable little show, cleverly constructed, and as soft and velvety a fit as a pair of Pretty Polly 15 deniers. And actually, with a serious message hidden under the glossy sheen: we are all lovely, we can all be lovely – just believe, be brave, and be yourself.