Well after a few hours sleep I haven’t calmed down. Where to start? Well just because you can doesn’t mean you should. This offensive, obscene and badly conceived piece ranks as the worst show I’ve ever endured.
Last night’s second Pulse Fringe offering was the excruciating debacle Sex Idiot by Bryony Kimmings, billed as a piece examining her reaction to discovering she had contracted an STI. So it was always likely to be risqué but where humour can help tackle some of the most difficult subjects this appalling piece fails on every level.
So what do you get for your money?
- A song with the delightful refrain of ‘I will rape and mutilate you’
- Another song consisting of a list of words for vagina
- The audience passing round scissors to donate their pubic hair
- Ms Kimmings then using said pubic hair as a moustache
- Dissecting two (animal we hope) hearts on stage and sewing them together
- Singing through her arse
- Urinating into a glass onstage
- Pouring contents of said glass over herself
Now I’m sure it’s meant to be shocking and offensive but for shock to work as a performance piece it needs the material to be clever, Sex Idiot fails as the material behind the shock is so weak and juvenile. Compare Sex Idiot with one of last year’s Pulse Festival late night offerings Horse by Flick Ferdinando. Horse was just as smutty, just as shocking but underpinned by strong performance, a clever and witty script and a clear understanding of how performance theatre can work – all woefully lacking in this ‘performance’.
Some of the audience loved it but sadly I have to chalk this one up as the worst hour in a theatre in 20 years (and I sat through Out Westgate and Guernica). While a passionate supporter for increased arts funding, if this is the level of ‘talent’ the Arts Council are funding perhaps the proposed £19million funding cut may force a radical review of funding such dross. New Wolsey Theatre and Pulse Fringe – hang your heads in shame
4 comments:
I've been pondering what to do with this one.
Of course, you're right: it was bewilderingly awful. My problem stemmed more from not being sure whether it was (unfunny) character comedy - creating the character of a deluded would-be "performance artist" and then making a series of woefully misconceived "performance pieces" as this character shared details of the wholly banal, unremarkable emotional life which prompted them - or whether it was the sort of piece that would prompt such a savage "character comedy" pastiche.
Obviously either way it was terrible, but I did wonder whether it was dreadful satire or dreadful actuality.
I'll be interested to read what you make of Everything Must Go, which is definitely real (I think), but for my money walked exactly the same perilous line of self-/performance-art-parody.
Andrew - I did briefly wonder if the concept was a parody of performance art but either way I think its a sad reflection on arts funding that this sort of rubbish gets funding and exposure from the Arts Council.
There was a similar show in last year's Pulse that nobody could agree if it was a spoof of physical theatre or just plain bad but if a spoof this is on joke you can only play so many times before the audience will stay away - a risky game in these belt-tightening times.
I'm now intrigued by Everything Must Go next week - I shall let you know my thoughts!
I also had the misfortune of seing this on Friday and have spent the weekend wondering what to make of it.
My conclusion....a total pile of crap that should crawl back into oblivion
No need to hang any heads! Have you seen the accolades, reviews and awards this show is receiving?
Steve Freeman
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