One Life Stand

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One Life Stand is an execrable thing. It’s rare that a show in Edinburgh makes me angry. Because it takes so much guts to do this here and there is so much on the line. But this show still managed. Here’s why.

It’s by Middle Child, who made All We Ever Wanted Was Everything and while gig-theatre is admittedly not my thing that show was, well, it was gig-theatre at its finest.

This is… I don’t know what this is. It’s incomprehensible for one thing: I had so little idea what anyone was saying at most points that I was really unclear as to the plot or the characters and everyone kept speak-singing but at the same time so you just got a headache and then occasionally the libretto would come through and you’d realise it was just as naff as you expected only naffer.

It’s about Kit and Kat and Momo (god knows why) and Kit and Kat are in a flailing relationship and Momo is the fifteen year-old girl who Kit’s attentions settle on while Kat sleeps with a sexy man she doesn’t like in a hotel room. [Oh, I did get the plot!]

I suppose there are things of interest – its slew of four-star reviews from eminent places  suggest that it is about modern lives on the internet, about alienation and disconnection and dating apps. But the only bit of this I understood in the show was this incredibly frustrating motif where Kit would send cat gifs to Kat and we were also supposed to laugh wryly but I felt mortified and completely sick because nowhere on EARTH APART FROM HELLISH THEATRELAND IS THAT A JOKE THAT MAKES ANY SENSE AND EVEN THERE IT IS NOT FUNNY IT IS VOMIT-INDUCING.

I’m being rude about the show because really its inexcusable quality – and the reason I’m writing about it at all – is because of its deeply unpleasant attitude to its protagonist and his relationship with the fifteen year-old Momo.

She is fifteen. She is a child. This show fails to realise that.

It seems to take a blurring of lines as an invitation to dodge any requirement to answer the difficulties it has made for itself – as though the plot does not betray a politics and as though putting a grown man onstage, drunk and talking about how much he wants to put his hands all over a child were just some twee plot-point and not requiring of censure: but the bloke is the hero of the show. He has the most stage-time, he has the most control on the plot, he has the biggest “arc” [not as big as it should have been, he should have been put in prison] he tells jokes and sings songs and ad libs with the audience.

How tone-deaf could this production be not to see that this is not a laughy jokey silly thing, but deeply serious, and deserving of attention rather than poorly-written, deeply cliché hand-wringing about… well I’ve still little idea what it thought it was about.

The best performances – the two women – are restrained and confident and expressive – whereas the man is a caricature of a cunt and he’s the one who the production gives free range do, letting him pluck this annoying guitar and prance about and generally be a knob.

I overheard some women saying afterwards that they felt uncomfortable in the production and I wasn’t surprised. I think it’s deeply uncomfortable to witness a production that allows a character to have paedophilia as a minor-character flaw and asks us to have sympathy for his erectile dysfunction while he talks about watching young women in online porn and simulates wanking into a microphone.

Childish, prurient, damaging, loathsome, unclear, untheatrical, misjudged, and unpleasant.

Wasn’t bored, though.

P.S. If you think any of  this is mean, there are honestly a thousand glowing reviews all over the place from places with real, proper reputations, so seek them out for a different opinion. Also: it’s paedophilia-apologism masquerading as a musical about dating apps, so…

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AN EDINBURGH RANT

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This is a rant about Edinburgh. I haven’t read it. I just wrote it. I have become frustrated. Here’s why.

There are so many people in Edinburgh who are ill. And before I came up here people predicted illness: people said it’s burdensome and worrying and we should worry and I thought “yeah, right, agree” and then some people suggested some ways people could help themselves like orange juice or whatever and then it gets down to it and it’s a fucking free-for-all and there is nobody anywhere offering anything.

If you’re in a hit show, you’re probably ok. If you’re in a co-production you’re probably also (at least financially) ok. But there are companies out there that are fucked financially and critically and emotionally and physically and mentally and where is their support.

You have to pay to do this. The Fringe Society take your money and then, I dunno, put up some fucking fences and design a horrible image for their posters: I have no idea, not a clue what they usefully do with that enormous pot of money. I presume they have some sort of opening party for the press and they all get shitfaced because people in regular non-freelance employment have that sort of benefit and they don’t even realise it’s a benefit.

But where is the support from the venues that take artists money and then fuck off and support the big shows, where is the support from the Fringe, where is the support – from all those people who need this place to succeed and thrive – for the venue technicians and the street teams and the artists – the fucking artists – that bring all that money in?

If you imagine the day in the life of an average performer here: they get up, they flyer for several hours in the rain – being treated like shit by the majority of horrible old men – they check their sales report and find out they have two people in and both are comps, they do their show and nobody comes, they get a horrible review from a critic that they worked really hard to get in, or a mediocre review but they read about other shows doing better than them, and they read reviews for shows they know are no good and probably offensive but are sold out and got five stars because someone famous is in it, and then they flyer some more and go to summerhall and see a show and it's disappointing but full and they maybe buy an overpriced beer and feel bad about that and then they go back to a strange flat they spent a month's wages on, and hope that tomorrow might be a bit better, only to find their presales are still at zero and they will be going home in debt. Of course of course of course people are ill. Because there is not an iota of support for any of them and they really should have known better.

The Fringe, quite frankly, can go burn. There are lots of beautiful things up here but it is making people ill and all so that the Underbelly can underpay everyone doing the actual work and then spend loads of money on a big purple elephant so twats from London can come up to the rain and watch Gyles Brandreth sing Kylie or whatever they do in that fucking tent every night. What's the point of it? 

I am so angry. I’m angry that this is the state of the arts: where you have to financially imperil yourself, destroy your mental health, make yourself sick, leave your support network, on the off-chance that Lyn Gardner and a programmer from Watford might come see your show. This is not good enough. And suggesting “drink more juice” and “call your mum” is not the solution. As with all mental health: it is not the individual’s responsibility – it absolutely needs to be pushed to the top.

So, the Fringe Society can answer my question: what the fuck do you think you’re playing at? What’s your plan? You need to get a grip. Because at the moment you are imperilling the mental health of young artists through your actions and inactions and if you think you’re not, talk to literally anyone flyering anywhere at the Fringe today and prepare to step into the fucking unknown. 

P.S. If someone could direct this at the Fringe Society that would be helpful.

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A year after starting the blog here, I realised that Blogger is quite an unaccountably shit site and I wanted a prettier one, so I've moving to a Wordpress over here. Please do follow me there.