Man Sings the Same Song Over and Over Again for an Hour

The thing about being recommended this show (I was recommended this show) is that you go into it with two questions. The first is "what's the song?". And the second of which is: "how does he make it interesting to watch?"

And I think I don't want to answer that first question, but I will say that when I walked in I was like... I think I have heard this before? Maybe? And when I walked out I was humming it and singing it a bit and knew all the words. Maybe I'll do it at karaoke.

The second question: well, I was thinking a lot about repetition and things you can do with it. What can you do with it?

You can foreground the length of the task, the grueling nature of it. But, I mean. Is that funny? It could be funny. He flirts with it a bit near the start. But he ultimately goes a different way with it. Probably a good choice. It's only an hour, lots of people sing for that long. Good bit to bring out a setlist, though.

You can emphasise the differences - how many ways can you sing the song? How many ways are there of looking at it? What are aspects that you can bring out? And that's the main thing he does here. Like, there's an early iteration where the lyrics are less sung than spoken, where the narrative is really brought to the fore. Here's what the song is about. And then lots of other versions. Like, — but let's not spoil it.

There's the pleasure of familiarity. Which is the song, of course, but it's also the recurring bits he does across different iterations. I guess this is also the pleasure of getting to notice details that you would have missed with a single iteration. Holding attention. A particular way of singing a particular line, a gesture at another. A banana for the bit where you sing "nananananana"

And when those bananas pile up in a bowl - that's also the pleasure of accumulation. Of acceleration. It's the same thing but it's also more each time. We start and a man comes on stage and sings a song. We end and — well, spoilers again, but he's still singing the song. But we are very different.

Blizzard

This is by Piotr Sikora, who I guess I am a fan of now. I saw his Furiozo with Alice last year and I really liked it. Just great clowning, and performed by a character who is both immediately familiar and not a character you expect a clown to be performing. In that, he's the hard-man Eastern European petty gangster. A scary guy - but that's why the clowning works so well, it has a counterpoint to it.

This show has a bunch in common with Furiozo. It's also an unusual choice of a character, someone with that masculine air of a capacity for violence. A Napoleonic soldier, riding his horse through a blizzard, a letter from his lover tucked inside his jacket, ready to lose his life or liberty fighting.

The show is still a work in progress, and you can see it. Sometimes it's a collection of bits, not all of which work as well as each other, not all of which connect up fully. But there's a delicacy still there. Something about his type of clowning - often funniest when he's still, or when he's paying attention to something, when he's being serious. Arranging something just right. No, not like that. The dress representing my lover keeps getting caught under the wheels of the suitcase which is propping her up. Let me attend to this.

Which is a style I find myself drawn to. With the recent Seven Part Pact Kickstarter, I've been thinking about my experience playing it, and how it was a good demonstration that what I enjoy is not outright silliness, but doing something inherently silly with real seriousness. And I see this with Piotr's work, too. Like, a nice small bit was — he got someone up from the audience to play the person who captures him, locks him up. Guiding her so she holds his arms behind his back, pushes him into a (invisible, imaginary) jail cell. She gets it, she slams the door on him, he's captured — and he makes a little sign, no, you have to lock it too. That's the kind of thing that tickles me.

Lady Bolognese - Class War

Two gremlins in dinnerlady uniforms, holding a Year 5 class hostage.

I liked it and maybe it was actually the funniest thing I saw on Friday. But I think it was just on that other side of silliness, so I did not love it? But also sometimes something can be good and that doesn't mean I have much to say about it. I guess actually what I want to talk about was the incredibly sweet audience member who was brought up for the final bit. Something about the way he was willing to play along, but also shy and embarrassed by the interaction. A show like this can live or die by who happens to get brought up for audience interaction, and he was the perfect choice.

How To Win A Gameshow

Speaking of audience interaction! Here's a show all about it. Me and Teri turned up, both with that fearless larp spirit, let's sit in the front row. And then, before the show even begins, one of the performers comes up to us & the guy we were next to. Are you together? Well, we are but he isn't. Perfect. You (Teri) swap for a guy right at the back. You (me) go over to the side. Getting right into the themes of - the show is about compliance within this entertainment structure. Stand up. No, all of you. Raise your right arm. Raise your left arm. Sit down. Clicker goes click - good boy.

Which, alas, I just don't find that shocking! It's tricky because on the one hand, the show needs to be flexible to adapt to the behaviour of individual people, to absorb that variety and stay on track. But on the other hand, to feel the crushing compliance of the system, it also needs to go far enough to make you go - oh. I guess it needs to feel like a magic trick, and one that has eaten you up.

Like — and please skip this paragraph if you don't want spoilers — I feel like the turning point of the show from comedy into something darker happens when they reveal the dog cage that the terrified and compliant permanent contestant is ordered to go into. But I am at the point in life where I see comic strips about having sex with a mute puppygirl and I'm like "what a funny and relatable comic", so... And then at the end, when the compliant and nervous audience member is asked to go into the second cage to collect his cash prize... I dunno, it just didn't land hard enough. Maybe because the guy we had was willing to crawl in without visible hesitation?

That said! Some sharp stuff in here, both planned and not planned. Planned — well, we were asked to move, right? And the final audience member was moved to our space. And that felt arbitrary, but was built into the structure of the show for reasons I will not spoil. Unplanned — the host calling out someone who was talking to their friend. What are you saying, share it with the class. I was wondering if the contestant was being held hostage. Well, that's a dramaturgical question not revealed until the end.

Maybe the issue is that the crowd and format wants this to be a light hearted comedy show, but actually what it wants to be is psychological horror, and the crowd and dynamics we got never quite resolved away from comedy?