Review: Make-Up (NoLogoProductions, GM Fringe)

Sunday 17 July 2022
King’s Arms Theatre, Salford

The Greater Manchester Fringe is on throughout the month of July at various venues around Greater Manchester. And, once again, I’m going to be reviewing a selection of the productions on offer for this blog, and also for The Festival Show on North Manchester FM.

On Sunday 17th July, I was at the King’s Arms Theatre to review Make-Up, a play by NoLogoProductions. The radio version of this review will be going out on The Festival Show on Friday 22nd July, but here’s the blog version…

Make-Up (written and directed by Andy Moseley) opens on an empty stage, with a dressing table and clothes rail suggesting that we are actually backstage. We’re waiting for the performer – Lady Christina (played by Moj Taylor) – to sing her final number on-stage. Taylor appears as Lady Christina in sequinned dress, black curly wig and heavy, stylized make-up and belts out one last number (‘Hey Big Spender’, of course), before going into the dressing room.

This might sound a little confusing – what’s ‘backstage’ and what’s ‘on-stage’ here? But the effect was quite an interesting one. The ‘backstage’ area was in the centre of the stage at the King’s Arms. When Taylor entered to perform as Lady Christina, he stood to the side of the stage and addressed us (the audience in the King’s Arms, that is) as though we were Lady Christina’s audience in a Wolverhampton club. Taylor then exited behind a curtain, before immediately reappearing and addressing us (the audience in the King’s Arms) as though we were a different audience, the ones who got to look behind the curtain and see Lady Christina’s reaction to those who had bought a ticket to watch her show. Although this all happened very quickly, and with a very light touch, this opening switch of perspective really sets up the rest of the show, and encourages a particular mode of engagement with the character – we could easily be an audience who have paid to watch a drag act, but for tonight we’re allowed to look behind that curtain.

What begins as a few acerbic (and very funny) swipes at Lady Christina’s audience – with a couple of cheeky lines about Wolverhampton itself – quite quickly becomes a more reflective monologue on the experience of performing a drag act in such clubs for twenty years. There’s some commentary on the changes in audience, for instance, and of the expectations and attitudes of newer, younger performers. Lady Christina is frustrated – jaded, even – commenting that young wannabes on the scene don’t realize that ‘There’s no fast-track to fame. There’s no slow-track to fame either.’ Taylor performs this opening sequence with charisma and humour, but his mannerisms and delivery exude a poignant world-weariness that sets us up for what is to come.

As we may well have expected from the set dressing, Lady Christina begins to remove some of her accessories and costume to reveal the performer beneath. This is Chris, and it’s his birthday. He has four birthday cards to show for it, and he doesn’t seem particularly happy to have received them.

Taylor handles the transformation – or, perhaps, deconstruction – from Lady Christina to Chris with a finely tuned emotional range. Every gesture seems to shout out a tangled web of emotions beneath the surface. The wig is removed and thrown to the floor, and Taylor pulls grips out of his hair with tangible annoyance (and not, it seems, only at the hairgrips). Make-up is removed angrily; hair is tousled with a sense of unease. Chris emerges from behind the costume and the monologue moves to addressing another set of concerns, the difficulties he feels as a performer, and as a gay man, who is no longer in – shall we say? – the first flush of youth.

The writing and performance throughout Make-Up are impressive, working together to create an absolutely real character, with all the messy complexities, contradictions and – yes – flaws that entails. But a moment comes when Chris looks into the mirror on his dressing table, and the whole focus of the play shifts. For me, this is when Make-Up really comes into its own.

The birthday cards Chris receives are for his forty-fourth birthday. Now, I appreciate I might be absolutely primed to identify with this, given that my forty-fourth birthday is literally a couple of weeks away, but I’d still argue that when that shift of focus comes, Moseley’s writing so beautifully captures something of the essence of being in your mid-forties that it almost transcends the specifics of Chris’s story.

I don’t think it’s a spoiler as such to say that when Chris looks into the mirror, he sees his father reflected back. So far, so you’re-in-your-forties-cliché. However, the monologue shifts then from Chris addressing the audience to Chris addressing his father, and to Chris saying twenty years’ worth of things he’s been unable to say to his father’s face.

Again, the emotional range here is notable. It is heart-breaking when Chris remembers how his youthful ambition to be a teacher was thwarted by the crushing realization of what Section 28 really meant. It is raw when Chris recalls his father’s reaction to discovering he was gay. And it’s utterly moving – painful, even – when Chris begins to recall his relationship with his mother after he became estranged from his father.

But the thing that really lifts Make-Up to the next level for me is the humanity of it all. As Chris goes over his formative experiences, there is a real sense that he has come – as, maybe, we all do in our forties – to see his father as a human being. A deeply flawed and perhaps unforgivable human being, but a human being nonetheless. Without actually quoting Larkin, Chris evokes the spirit of ‘This be the Verse’, as he reflects briefly on his father’s formative experiences. It’s not an excuse, as he’s quick to point out, but it goes some way towards an explanation. Taylor’s performance of this part of the monologue is nuanced, balancing a clear desire to understand with brittle anger at having had to deal with someone else’s problems.

Make-Up is a one-act, one-hour monologue, which is a fairly standard format for a Fringe play (I’d say it’s the most usual format I’ve seen at the Greater Manchester Fringe). NoLogoProductions really understand the potential of this format, and the overall ‘shape’ of Make-Up shows an assured ability to use the time and space effectively. The richness of Chris’s backstory is conjured with a deft touch, and the arc of self-awareness the character travels leads us to a satisfying conclusion (with a firm avoidance of sentimentality and just a hint of an unanswered question or two). It’s a confident piece of writing and direction, brought to life by a truly compelling performance from Taylor.

In case you haven’t guessed, Make-Up is a strong recommendation from me. Although it’s now finished its run at the Greater Manchester Fringe, I believe NoLogoProductions do have other performance dates lined up at other festivals. If you get the chance to see it, it’s well worth a watch. And I’ll certainly be looking out for future work from Moj Taylor, Andy Moseley and NoLogoProductions in the future.

Make-Up was on at the King’s Arms Theatre on 16th and 17th July, as part of the Greater Manchester Fringe. For the full programme of Greater Manchester Fringe shows on this year, please visit the festival website.

Review: Bessie at Midnight, Alone (Blue Masque Theatre Company, GM Fringe)

Friday 15 July 2022
Salford Arts Theatre

The Greater Manchester Fringe is on throughout the month of July at various venues around Greater Manchester. And, once again, I’m going to be reviewing a selection of the productions on offer for this blog, and also for The Festival Show on North Manchester FM.

On Friday 15th July, I was at the Salford Arts Theatre to review Bessie at Midnight, Alone, a performance by Blue Masque Theatre Company. The radio version of this review will be going out on The Festival Show on Friday 22nd July, but here’s the blog version…

Bessie at Midnight, Alone is a new production from Blue Masque Theatre Company. Written by Derek Martin and directed by Rhonwen McCormack, the play is a one-act (sort of!) monologue featuring the titular Bessie… well, at midnight and alone.

Bessie is a prostitute, and she is waiting in an isolated patch of woodland for one of her clients to arrive. As she waits, she tells her story to the audience in a roundabout, meandering narrative, punctuated by the ominous sounds of rustling undergrowth and interrupted by Bessie calling out to whoever it is who is watching her. Her story takes in her life as a prostitute, and a couple of her regular clients (The Colonel and Merrie Andrew) with whom she’s had long-standing business arrangements. Bessie also talks about her mother, and the way she was introduced to the sex trade as a child, and about a young rival who goes by the name Maria Bella Amorosa, despite not actually being Italian.

Bessie, played by Janelle Thompson, appears on stage with just a lantern in one hand and a blanket in the other. She is confident and assured, despite the darkness and foreboding noises coming from the bushes. She is waiting for Merrie Andrew, a young man who – we will learn later in the play’s first half – is somewhat intellectually challenged.

The first striking thing about the character of Bessie is her costume. Designed by Zoey Barnes, Bessie’s outfit sets the scene for how the play will unfold. While undoubtedly conjuring the image of a Victorian ‘harlot’, Bessie’s outfit is unfinished and curiously anachronistic. An electric blue bustier is paired with a hooped underskirt cage (but no petticoat or overskirt) through which fishnet stockings are visible. This costuming creates a very particular atmosphere and tone, without being easily attached to specific historic circumstance – and this approach will define the play as a whole.

Although a lot of Bessie at Midnight, Alone feels as though it is set in particular time – specifically, the late Victorian period – this is effected through touching on certain stereotypical images of the ‘harlot’ from popular culture, rather than directly offering historical context. On a closer watch, much of the play works to deny a Victorian setting rather than affirm it – ‘Merrie Andrew’ feels like a character from an earlier time, and some of Bessie’s language (e.g. referring to nuns as having a ‘hotline to God’) feels far more modern. Musical cues, too, unsettle our notion of a clear setting, with some parts of Bessie’s monologue being accompanied by a varied soundtrack that takes in styles from the medieval to the modern.

Now, I’ve said that Bessie at Midnight, Alone is a monologue, and it is – technically. But this term perhaps doesn’t do justice to the storytelling techniques at work here. While much of the narrative is delivered by Bessie ‘telling her story’ to the audience, she breaks off at times to perform short sketches to illustrate scenes from her life.

It’s in these sketches that Thompson’s skill as a performer really shines. As Bessie acts out the roles of Merrie Andrew, The Colonel, her mother and – later – a police officer and a nun, Thompson embodies these characters, adopting new voices, mannerisms and physical performance to bring the characters to life on stage. Thompson doesn’t slip, either, making each persona as ‘real’ as Bessie herself. Interestingly, the only significant character who doesn’t ‘appear’ on stage is Maria Bella Amorosa, whose interactions with Bessie are only ever narrated and not performed. Without giving any spoilers – though, as Bessie herself notes in the second half of the play, some audience members may guess something important before it is revealed (I’ll admit that I did!) – this decision is, in fact, a storytelling technique in itself, and one that works very well.

At the beginning of this review, I referred to Bessie at Midnight, Alone as a one-act play. This is technically true, as there is no interval and the performer doesn’t leave the stage throughout. However, it’s also technically not true, as the narrative and performance is split into two distinct sections, which are separated by a brief blackout and an interval of time.

The play’s first half takes place in the woods where Bessie is waiting, alone, for Merrie Andrew. In this section, she recounts various events in her life that have led her to that place at that moment, often boldly asserting her contentment in her choice of career (though this is tempered by several suggestions that it was far from a ‘choice’ – Bessie does acknowledge earlier aspirations to be an actor or a nun, from which she was steered by her mother, and to marry The Colonel, from which she was steered by… well… The Colonel). That’s not to say there aren't indications of an underlying dissatisfaction, or even unhappiness. I found some of the more comical set pieces – for instance, the Merrie Andrew scenes – unsettling in their evocation of a woman whose entire adult life has revolved around being used for the pleasure of others. ‘You’re not like the others’ quickly gives way to ‘You let me do anything’, and Thompson skilfully lets a subtle hollowness ring through the comedic lines.

This first half builds to a climax as the noise from the bushes builds to a moment of confrontation. The lights drop, and then we rejoin Bessie a number of hours later. The play’s second half then takes a different direction, with the protagonist more reflective and less content with her life. There are more questions in the second act – some of which are directly posed by Bessie, and some of which might linger in the minds of the audience.

In some respects, the play’s second half is less focused, and its narrative ‘shape’ is less distinct. There are moments of repetition, and Bessie’s assured narrative of the first half gives way to a more fragmented (often unclear) storyline. For me, this change of direction worked well. The clarity and confidence of the first half gives way to vulnerability and fear, picking up on some of the more unsettling undercurrents in Bessie’s earlier narration and allowing the depth and complexity of the character to develop.

I do wonder, though, whether this transition would have been clearer had the play been more definitively split into two acts. A short interval after the climactic blackout might help to keep the audience on a surer footing.

Overall, though, I enjoyed Bessie at Midnight, Alone. Perhaps it’s a mark of my own personal taste, but I found the vagueness of time and place, along with the circuitous shape of Bessie’s story, very compelling. I do enjoy uncertainty! However, these features can only work with an assured and engaging performance, and Thompson certainly offered us that. If you get chance to see Blue Masque Theatre’s production of Bessie at Midnight, Alone at another festival this year, this one’s a recommendation from me.

Bessie at Midnight, Alone was on at the Salford Arts Theatre on 14th-16th July, as part of the Greater Manchester Fringe. For the full programme of Greater Manchester Fringe shows on this year, please visit the festival website.

Review: HYENAS! (Sugar Butties, GM Fringe)

Monday 11 July 2022
King’s Arms Theatre, Salford

The Greater Manchester Fringe is on throughout July at various venues around Greater Manchester. And, as usual, I’m going to be reviewing a selection of the productions on offer for this blog, and also for The Festival Show on North Manchester FM.

On Monday 11th July, I was at the King’s Arms Theatre to see a double bill from Sugar Butties. In my last review, I talked about The Olive Tree, the first half of that double bill, so now it’s time to turn to the second half, HYENAS! The radio version of this review will be going out on The Festival Show on Friday 15th July, but here’s the blog version…

Like the first half of this double bill, The Olive Tree, HYENAS! is a one-act, one-woman show. It’s written and performed by Olivia Nicholson, and it’s set on a hen weekend in Spain.

As the show opens, Nicholson walks into the room in a short, sequinned dress, face plastered in makeup, greeting the audience as though we were fellow guests at the party. I can’t remember exactly which song was playing as she entered, but I’m sure you can imagine the soundtrack that was used here. ‘Livin’ La Vida Loca’ was one of the very evocative numbers used, for instance.

Nicholson plays four characters in HYENAS!, transitioning seamlessly between them. She is Kirsty (the bride-to-be), Lauren (her friend from work), Sarah (a mousy schoolteacher who seems out of her depth with the other hens) and Tasha (who is a bit more cougar than hyena, truth be told). The first character we meet is Lauren, who walks around the room, asking us all how we know the bride-to-be and sharing some little stories of her own.

I’ll get this out of the way now – like The Olive Tree, HYENAS! involves audience participation, and not always of the gentler kind. Nicholson puts audience members on the spot, asking questions like ‘How do you know Kirsty?’ that requires them to improvise a response in front of everyone. At one point, Lauren greets Kirsty, and an audience member has to improvise as an actual character from the play. I have to say, I think this type of audience participation works better in HYENAS! than in The Olive Tree, but that’s because it has a more confrontational style from the off. Unlike the gentle intimacy of Forrest’s confessional storytelling, the hen night setting of HYENAS! immediately evokes the potential for discomfort and tension (playing with the stereotype of such an event).

Initially, Lauren also seems something of a stereotype. Her mode of speech and mannerisms (particularly the way Nicholson mimes her sucking on the straw of her cocktail, which is 100% played for laughs) are exaggerated and caricatured. And while you might be forgiven for thinking that you’ve seen this all before (at first anyway), there are three very good reasons for the exaggeration.

Firstly, and most straightforwardly, it allows Nicholson to show off her undoubted talents as a comic performer. While these characters are stereotypes, she captures them beautifully with pitch-perfect timing.

Secondly, the OTT construction of the characters allows the audience to clearly distinguish between the four of them. There are no costume or makeup changes as Nicholson transitions from one character to the next; they’re differentiated by her performance, not by physical appearance. This was done very well – there were no points where Nicholson slipped and, for example, accidentally said a Sarah line in a Lauren voice, or missed a character’s trademark mannerism.

But it’s the third reason that really appealed to me. Of course, none of the characters are, actually, the caricatures we believe them to be. In each case, the brash comedy character is concealing something darker and more painful. This isn’t necessarily unexpected – ‘tears of a clown’ is, after all, a staple of many darkly comedic performances – but it is done well here.

Lauren’s character is an in-your-face mixture of vapidity and rudeness. But another side emerges when she removes herself from the party and goes into the toilets. I won’t spoil anything here, but she has a phone conversation with her husband that goes to a very different place than I was expecting and was surprisingly moving.

Sarah and Tasha also have hidden depths, though Nicholson plays with different ways of revealing these. The character Sarah acts out her secret pain in a flashback that is laugh-out-loud funny – almost farcical – but framed by a hard edge of very real anguish and subtle detail that precedes the flashback, which conjures something really rather unpleasant. Nicholson performs this scene very quickly after Sarah’s first appearance, meaning that the audience’s reaction to her subsequent scenes is always informed by it.

Tasha is presented in a different way. Her backstory – the potential darkness that lies behind her sexually voracious and not particularly pleasant exterior – comes through a rather louche monologue (supposedly a dialogue, though the other participant doesn’t respond) in which she explains her past relationship history. This is very much a story told through implication and hint, and it ends with a somewhat unsettling punchline.

But, as one would expect on a hen weekend, it’s the bride who gets the most attention. Kirsty is even more of a caricature than Lauren at first glance. Her pout, her girly intonation, her repeated refrain of ‘jokes’, her bridezilla demand that everyone wear the same little red dress on a night out all work to convey a character we think we already know.

However, it is probably Kirsty who has the most depth here. Nicholson reveals Kirsty’s backstory in a fragmented, distorted way. We learn early on that her mother has passed away, but later in the play are hints that there is something else, something even darker, to the story. A light-hearted Mr and Mrs quiz, in which the questions (written, fortunately, not improvised) are read out by members of the audience, gives an indication that the groom-to-be might not be the catch Kirsty has been making out. We see more of this later in the play, as Kirsty’s story culminates in a monologue delivered over the top of the karaoke song she’s supposed to be singing. For a play that’s so loud and in-your-face, the amount that’s left unsaid is impressive.

Overall, I really enjoyed HYENAS! And it is a great companion piece to The Olive Tree. The two shows complement each other beautifully. Both use comedy – often physical, parodic or caricatured comedy – to good effect, but the comedy is deceptive. There is real pain behind the laughs in both plays, though The Olive Tree uses its bittersweet narrative style to present pain as a life experience from which one can learn and change, and HYENAS! has a more raw, unhealed pain that screams, rather than cries, behind the laughter.

Like Forrest in The Olive Tree, Nicholson is an assured performer. And while I may not have been entirely comfortable with all the elements of audience participation in the two shows, it should be acknowledged that it’s a mark of two confident and prepared performers that they would risk it!

Ultimately, The Olive Tree and HYENAS! are both plays that get to grips with something about the human condition, though with different styles and tones. I really enjoyed this double bill and I’m looking forward to seeing what Sugar Butties do next. I enjoyed seeing Forrest and Nicholson’s solo pieces, but I think I’d also enjoy seeing them perform together in the future.

HYENAS! was on at the King’s Arms Theatre on 11th and 12th July, as part of the Greater Manchester Fringe. For the full programme of Greater Manchester Fringe shows on this year, please visit the festival website.