Sam Fox is captivating. Every muscle she moves during this 55 minute performance conveys something to us. She can be intimidating, crazy, cute, curious, and all within 10 seconds, with the flick of a wrist or the sharpening of a stare. She is both pretentious and unpretentious, flouncing about, the only performer on the stage, but generous with her gestures, not afraid to make a fool of herself. She plays a multiplicity of characters, whilst remaining herself, and speaks a hundred stories whilst being really very specific indeed. And mostly in Welsh.
Lady GoGo Goch is a self-professed ‘music-theatre show about Welshness’. It’s far more bizarre and singular than you might think, from that description. Dragons, rugby, the language, mining and Shirley Bassey come into it, yes – and it’s comic, too, at times. But it’s also exotic, mysterious, arresting, and woven with sweet, powerful, rich music.
The startlingly inventive music is created live by Portuguese Ricardo Rocha and Sam Fox, using loop pedal, a panoply of bespoke folk musical instruments, and Fox’s versatile voice. Not exactly the sort of thing you’d want to listen to in the car on the way home from work, it mixes rustic lyre, electric guitar, pieces of slate (ahem, slateophones), with the highest note you can imagine someone singing, sheep-bleating, screaming and very exaggerated welsh phonetics. It’s a fascinating soundtrack, studded with snatches of song that several welsh-accented audience members try and sing along to.
Many a cultural reference passes me by, partly because I’m not always the quickest with cultural references, and partly perhaps because I’m not Welsh. Certainly other audience members occasionally chuckle in recognition at images and lyrics that don’t mean anything to me. I don’t feel destabilised by this because so much of the singing is in Welsh that I quickly become used to not understanding the extent of this performance, comfortable that this is how it is intended, and content to let elements seep in and others drift around me. It’s liberating, actually, and Fox intends it, building up to it carefully.
Beginning with a loop of percussive slate, guitar and sound, in the opening track Fox is dressed in what is presumably a traditional countrywoman’s outfit with a large, Quaker-ish hat. She’s bulky and fabricky and I suspect (rightly) that she has a million other bits of costume on underneath. She’s inscrutable and builds up the track with the oddest sounds, creating all sorts of shapes with her mouth. It is alien-sounding but beautiful, and interesting, as if she’s trying to make every noise possible with the human mouth. As the pair speed up the tempo, I realise that she’s doing Welsh phonetics.
She ends the show standing tall on top of the highest golden heels you can imagine, on top of a chair, on top of a stage. Disco lights and beats surround her. Dressed in a tiny gold dress, with a crown on her head and a homemade harp strapped to her front, she’s some kind of modern hero, accomplished, beautiful, imposing, rousing. It’s an arresting image, as are all her nine ‘Ladies’, each with a particular musical track or theme, certain mannerisms, costume and voice peculiarities. I have no idea who they are, without the programme notes (for which I am grateful), but it doesn’t matter – I am free to appreciate the small details whether or not I can see the whole. This does require a level of open-mindedness, but if you’ve decided as a non-Welsh person to go and see a ‘music-theatre show about Welshness’ in the Bristol Old Vic Ferment programme, then let’s assume you have that.
The show is carefully structured to ensure that the audience don’t get too lost – there’s enough English, comedy and character-changes in there to keep us occupied. It is seamlessly and admirably stage-managed – a musical instrument is detached from the back of a chair, a heartily enjoyed cup of tea hosts a mirror in its saucer for the removal of black facepaint (beard/coal) with a wetwipe (napkin). The timing is consistently perfect and for someone packed into so many items of clothing, Fox cuts a fine figure.
This is a brave and accomplished performance resplendent with the exoticism, mystery, and peculiarity of traditions and culture. Much, much more thought and planning has gone into it than I was able to take away from one viewing, but I found that inspiring, nourishing and exciting.