Thursday 29 June 2017

Dirty Work: The Late Shift

Act one. There are two people onstage and there is a blogger in the audience who is excited. The blogger has been told good things about this show. The blogger feels this might be a rite of passage. The performers are wearing garish costumes. The blogger thinks this is a gesture. The blogger is unsure.
The performers are talking about a hypothetical show. The events do not happen. They are all dramatic. The show is not. That appears to be the point. The performers keep talking. They talk more. They describe lots of dramatic, shocking events. People titter. This is probably clever and funny. This will become clear to the blogger, the blogger thinks. There is another woman dressed all in black who seemingly randomly puts a record on sometimes. This will become profound, the blogger thinks. The male performer looks like my uncle’s friend, the blogger thinks. He also talks like my uncle’s friend. His performance style is like someone who believes everything he is saying is intensely important and deserving of attention, just like my uncle’s friend, the blogger thinks. Why is he shrugging on every line? The blogger finds this grating. The blogger continues finding this grating and is unsure if this is the point. Time passes. Oh, and then some more music plays. The blogger continues to be annoyed, somewhat predictably.
End of Act One.
An interval is described. There is not an interval. An interval would be a blessing. An interval would allow you to leave. The blogger doesn’t feel complicit or forced to stay. The blogger’s annoyance is not productive. The blogger feels bored.
Act Two. The repetition of the show not happening but being described is referenced. People are laughing at jokes that would have been funny had the last twenty years not happened, had Breach and Barrel Organ and Chris Thorpe not happened, this performance style might be clever or funny, but, like a rerun of a dated episode of Friends shown to someone who didn’t watch Friends, the jokes aren’t funny. The blogger considers heckling. The blogger spends the next twenty minutes considering funny heckles. The blogger plans a tweet for later, something about how someone should have just given these performers a copy of Offending the Audience. The blogger makes themselves laugh. The show is still not making the blogger laugh but the people still keep laughing for no reason. The blogger’s uncle’s friend keeps shrugging and occasionally gurning at the audience. The female performer does a fairly good monologue about different forms of transformation. This is quite exciting. The blogger thinks they are getting somewhere. This seems to explain what the show thinks it is doing. You think how good a performer she is. Then you remember how boring the whole thing is and she sits down and the man is shrugging again. End of Act Two.
After the show. Magicians maybe are described. Stand-up comedy. Some jokes about political theatre, and somewhat predictably Trump. Of course they think that's very ironic and funny. Lots of other stuff. Blah blah blah blah blah. Interminable blah. The performers continue to think this is terribly important. The blogger watches the audience and is confused why they are all smiling. Perhaps they are all press or all huge Forced Entertainment fans or perhaps the blogger is stupid, the blogger thinks. Perhaps the blogger is just not getting it? Perhaps they need to be working harder? The male performer shrugs off yet another boring staid image in the style of someone remembering a particularly funny time they saw Nina Abramovic at a party and the blogger is completely done. The blogger really thinks about leaving. The blogger is so hopeful for something, anything to make this not a waste of time. The blogger is so fucking glad they didn't bring their mum, she does not need more persuading that theatre is a pretentious waste of time, the blogger thinks. The blogger is strikingly aware that they spent money on this. This annoys the blogger no end. The blogger gets actively annoyed thinking about who this is for. The blogger thinks about all the brilliant work going unproduced or unseen that could take the place of this waste of everyone’s time. The blogger is more angry than they have been in any show in months. Oh, the lights are dimming slowly. This is some blunt and ill-formed gesture about the end of the world being like when the lights go down. The blogger thinks how obscene it is to create such an anti-theatrical object. The blogger finally seizes the moment: the blogger throws a shoe, the stage explodes, the world explodes, neoliberal culture is destroyed, the theatre becomes a time machine, the blogger steps into the time machine, the time machine takes the blogger back three months. The blogger is buying a ticket but changes their mind. The blogger is very happy. The lights go down completely. The two performers emerge from the darkness to check the pulse of the blogger and pronounce them dead. They record the death and rob the corpse and spend the money in the pub with all their fans. The blogger’s corpse is found in a dark room. In their blue hand, underlined, is a review by Lyn Gardner which is incisive and beautifully argued and completely completely and utterly not in accordance with anything the blogger experienced. The dead blogger turns into some words. The words remember they don’t have an uncle. The words give up too.

End.


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