Greg McLaren has been singing – a lot. One day McLaren decided to venture into the world and sing, replacing every mode of speech in his day-to-day activities with song, no matter how mundane. Doris Day can Fuck Off is the result of his self-imposed task.
Wearing an 80s pop punk get-up we see Greg scrambling amongst amps, cables, speakers and guitar, and it becomes obvious we are in store for some mode of musically informed live art spectacle. Greg tries breaking the ice with a sharing of names through rhythmical song, which instead of setting the spectator at ease creates this form of tension between us, an uneasy feeling, which almost matches what Greg felt when he first went out into the world to sing.
Throughout the performance Greg interacts with the voices he’s encountered on his mission – in his own words, he steals them like a thief for his own gain, and they are layered throughout the performance. One of the standout moments in the production is his Moby style song ‘Directions’ where he mixes a traffic warden’s voice into a new age rap, a symbol of joy taken from a mundane meeting. It is apparent that the human voice is important to Greg as he plays with and samples foreign languages and different dialects, but other than the occasional rock ballad, the optimism of his mission is never really brought to the surface. The outside world’s voice is most often met with hostility – represented to the spectator in such a way that we long for a positive spin on Greg’s encounters.
Greg’s performance is disjointed – one moment I find myself rooting for his cause and sympathetic toward his loss of hope; the next, because of his sporadic performance register, I feel his approach is misjudged. So, in the end, it becomes apparent that the world isn’t like a Doris Day song, and no one really is joining in.
