Now this isn’t the grand reopening of our beloved temporary theatre, now a 15-year-old; this is more an amuse-bouche, readying you for for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf landing with a wham in September.
But what I can spy is brighter, snazzier and better than you could possibly imagine. There’s no better welcome back to the informal, industrial and a little chaotic space than POTW. Fringe and award favourite In Bed With My Brother (Dora Lynn, Kat Cory and Nora Alexander) are back and grappling with the cult underdogs of the music world The Shaggs (and in the process, themselves). It’s messy, experimental and half-baked, which I normally like, but also confusing, headache-inducing and spasmodic, which I normally don’t.
Forced to practise for hours alone in their basement by their controlling father, the reluctant band struggle to play their local town to boos and chucked Coke cans (a ritual the lucky front two-thirds of the audience get to recreate). Using untuned guitars and bizarre, seemingly improvised lyrics, their first and only album, Philosophy of the World, was not a commercial success. Later they were rediscovered by various artists across the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, with Frank Zappa saying they were “better than The Beatles”. Two of the bandmates are still playing, one sadly having died, so this is still an ongoing story, twisting around the idea of creative success.
This concept is an alluring one – the band’s distinctive manes and outsider mystique have tempted the likes of Tom Cruise, who owns the rights (according to the show); yet capturing women’s refusal to bow down to the pressure of the music industry is not an easy task. A show about “one of the most divisive bands in rock history, provoking wonder and horror in equal measure” (the Guardian) could fall into the same trap. Cue strobe lighting (Lily Dawford), frantic exercise, thumping techno, ranting mic work, nudity, anger and multiple murders – although technically it’s maybe only one murder and then multiple exorcisms. It is certainly a fitting tribute for the band, but I’m not sure if that’s the compliment it sounds like.
Self-referential comedy and playful pushing of theatrical boundaries are the company’s calling cards. Nigel Barrett, playing the much-abused stage manager and The Shaggs’ controlling father, takes the brunt of the women’s blows. I understand this concept of killing one’s oppressors, but the bludgeoning does rather go on for a bit.
They work in rather perplexing relationships with their own dads. Then there’s a long sequence where Dora Lynn raves about the similarities between the band and the theatre troupe while Kat Cory writes on a chalkboard and Nora Alexander plays the drums appropriately badly. The research is there, but its transmutation onto the stage easily loses me and my guest.
The unrhythmic heart of the show is in the right place, and this irreverent and punk ethos will be to many people’s taste. Yet, like The Sex Pistols, I always prefer them in theory rather than in practice. In the process of trying to cram in as much personal and pertinent information about the band and their spirit as possible, the creators might have forgotten that an audience is sat in the lovely new Yard seats, watching a process and not a polished product. Yet maybe that was the point all along – how meta are you willing to go?
Philosophy of the World
Yard Theatre
Queen’s Yard, White Post Lane
E9 5EN
