Review: Janet (HelenandJohn, GM Fringe)

Monday 9th July 2018
King’s Arms, Salford

For me, the best (and strongest) part of a fringe festival is the variety of performances on offer. I mentioned in a previous post that the Greater Manchester Fringe programme is expanding year by year, and the 2018 schedule is certainly the most ambitious one yet. Last year, I was only able to see two Fringe shows (though both were innovative and exciting in very different ways). So I’m also expanding my schedule this year – I’m trying to see a much bigger range of stuff, to really get a flavour of the diversity of this year’s programme.

So, after seeing a musical, a one-woman spoken word show and an old-school farce, the next show I saw was described as ‘object theatre’ or ‘unconventional puppetry’.

Janet, co-devised and performed by Helen Ainsworth, is a story about the struggle to find individual identity in the face of inescapable (and cruel) destiny. Janet is born – to an English father and French mother – and from the very moment of her birth, her future path is sternly mapped out for her. The show follows Janet’s attempts to reject this path, and the trials and tribulations that follow.

What makes this story unusual is that Janet is played by a lumped of uncooked bread dough. Her father is a jug of water, and her mother a bag of flour.

Object theatre differs from conventional puppetry in that the puppets are found objects, rather than tailor-made mannequins. In this performance, the only puppet made especially for the show is Janet herself, as a new batch of dough is produced for each performance. Other characters are played by a teapot and a rolling pin, though Ainsworth is also present on stage as the baker/puppeteer.

The skill (and the charm) of the performance lies in Ainsworth’s manipulation of the objects – particularly the unruly blob of dough that is Janet herself. The ease with which the audience accepts the anthropomorphism of these everyday items is impressive – enhanced by Ainsworth’s seamless voicing of the characters – and it is incredible how something as ordinary as a bag of flour becomes so animated in her hands.

One of my favourite parts of the show was Janet’s dream sequence. As Janet falls asleep, visions of bloomers, croissants, baguettes and sliced white float around her, reminding her of the inevitable destiny she faces. Again, Ainsworth’s skill in manipulating household objects is extraordinary, and these sequences play out like stop motion animation.

As a metaphor, of course, the uncooked lump of dough is quite a clear one. Object theatre often relies on such use of metaphor, as it encourages audiences to engage in more non-literal thinking. However, there’s a complex back-and-forth here. On the one hand, we’re being invited to think about the metaphor of unformed dough in terms of identity, self-determination and societal pressure (and, in places, gender). On the other, the performance invites us to think about the object itself, wondering about the possibilities of movement inherent (but hitherto undeveloped) in the inanimate item. There’s a playfulness here, as the manipulation of the dough to move in recognisably human ways is reminiscent of how children interact with plasticine and Play-Doh, but there’s also something rather intellectual in the show’s understanding of the desire (need, even) to create narrative and story out of such games.

Ultimately, Janet is a story of an unconventional character. And I guess the mark of its success lies in how invested the audience is in character – how far we’re able to see Janet as Janet, and forget that she’s actually an inanimate lump of dough being moved by a woman in a baker’s costume. And, in that, the show was undoubtedly effective. From the moment Ainsworth flipped a teapot upside-down and made ‘Lady Grey’ talk, I was immersed in the story, and Janet herself is as much an identifiable puppet as a bespoke marionette would be.

Without giving any spoilers, I will say that this show has its dark moments. Janet’s interaction with the baguettes Claude and François is… uncomfortable. (Make no mistake – this is not a show for children. I don’t think I quite expected a bag of flour to swear so bitterly!) The show’s blurb promises ‘a little B-Movie Horror’, and this is certainly apparent. It also has one of the most unsettling endings I’ve seen in a puppet show.

Janet is an expertly performed tragi-comedy, with laughs, surprises and an unnerving finale. It’s off-beat, unusual and very enjoyable – everything I’m looking for in a Fringe production.

Review: Cheaters: A Play About Infidelity (KinkyBoot Institute, GM Fringe)

Sunday 8th July 2018
King’s Arms, Salford

On Sunday, I was at the King’s Arms (or Kings Arms, depending on your feelings about apostrophes) to see my next Greater Manchester Fringe show: Cheaters: A Play About Infidelity, written and directed by Ramsbottom-based comedian Lewis Charlesworth.

Cheaters is unabashedly a farce, and it does exactly what it says on the tin. It’s a one-act comedy about marital infidelity. Married men Kev (Charlesworth) and Dave (Dan Sheader) bring two (also married) women back to Dave’s house for a bit of ‘extra-curricular activity’. Laddish Dave has copped off with Alex (Kathryn Stirton), who is more than enthusiastic at the beginning of the show (entering the stage with her legs wrapped round Dave’s waist and proposing a raucous toast to ‘freedom’). Kev is more awkward and uncomfortable than his friend, and is ill-at-ease with Jess, a woman who goes from horny to hostile at the drop of a gin.

As the evening (or rather, early morning) unfolds and the booze flows, the foursome encounter various obstacles to their anticipated couplings. Surprise revelations and realisations (plus a rather physical reaction to a drinking game) conspire to make the planned activity seem less palatable. Undeterred, the lads decide to come up with a different plan.

Make no mistake, Cheaters is as light-hearted as they come. It’s bawdy (downright filthy, in places) in its humour, and pretty straightforward in its content. This is not biting satire by any means, and the closest Cheaters comes to social commentary is its (very funny) assessment of Wetherspoon’s as ‘the home of budget infidelity’.

But it works – because it doesn’t pretend to be anything other than it is. As Alex says towards the end of the show, there are far more important things going on in the world, so a bit of consensual adultery shouldn’t be too serious a concern. While some people might find the rather nihilistic approach to marriage a bit sad – when each of the characters explain their reasons for cheating, it becomes apparent that they run the gamut from happily married with a devoted spouse to ‘living separate lives’, suggesting that no marriage is really secure from infidelity – the play is of the old school domestic comedy variety, and we’re never encouraged to take things too seriously.

Of the performances, Charlesworth is a stand-out. Primarily a comedian, he brings a farcical physicality to the role of Kev. This begins with facial expressions, but escalates to a full-blown bodily routine (culminating in… well, you should probably see the show to find out). Sheader’s performance as Dave is quite the contrast, but equally enjoyable. Playing laddish extremes for laughs, Sheader steers just the right side of cliché, and his Dave offers a verbal counterpoint to his friend’s increasingly anxious contortions. Weirdly, by the end of the show, I found Dave to be one of the more sympathetic characters, and this is credit to Sheader’s performance.

Speaking of physicality, all the cast deserve praise for their near-acrobatics on what is a pretty low-key set, comprising a sofa, a coffee table and a drinks cabinet. Despite the fact – and this was revealed by a slight slip of the throw that covered it – the ‘sofa’ isn’t actually a sofa, the four main characters cavort on and across it with admirable enthusiasm. When called upon to ‘hide’ themselves on a stage with no hiding places, the actors let the minimal set enhance the comedy of the scene.

My only reservation about the play would be in response to its final scene. Without giving too much away, this scene sums up the relationships presented on stage and points to a happy, light-hearted resolution with no permanent harm done. It’s a fair conclusion to the laissez-faire atmosphere of the play. However, there are just one too many mentions of the characters who don’t appear on stage at any point – Kev’s wife and Jess’s husband – for it to be completely comfortable. In the case of Kev’s wife Helen, there’s just a little hint of cruelty in the continued deception, and this is at odds with the tone elsewhere. Cheaters works because of its everyone’s-at-it raunchiness – it felt strange to be repeatedly reminded of an innocent victim in its final moments.

Cheaters is definitely a play about infidelity. As I said, it’s unashamedly a comedy, and makes no bones about this. But with giggle-inducing dialogue, frantic revelations and knockabout antics, it achieves exactly what it sets out to do. Charlesworth has made a strong transition from stand-up to playwright here, and I’m sure we’ll see much more of him in the future (mind you… if you’ve seen Cheaters, you’ve already seen quite a bit of him! 😉).