The Clown of Clowns

1
Reviewer's Rating

As part of their annual Grimeborn Opera Festival, the Arcola debuts what is undoubtedly the worst performance I have ever seen.

You know what it’s like when you’re trying to sleep and you can hear a single mosquito buzzing right by your ear? Imagine that, only at megaphone volume, and you have an idea of how enjoyable the music is. The performers murder Schoenberg’s experimental 1912 composition with a piano that sounds like it’s been salvaged from a skip, a soprano who can’t act and costumes which remind me of my childhood fancy-dress box.

There must be a prize going for overacting. How else can you explain the bulging eyes of every cast member – is this supposed to indicate some kind of extreme emotion? Why else would someone look like they were trying to impersonate a frog being stepped on? For an hour.

The first half of the performance follows the character of Pierrot, interpreted by dancers who do their best with a lazy choreography which screams unresolved teenaged angst through contemporary dance clichés. Pierrot pursues Columbine and fights her jealous boyfriend whilst rubbing white paint on his face. In the background, our amphibian soprano throws petals at him. Why.

Unfortunately, once the second half begins, you almost miss the tuneless German warbling and Pierrot’s face paint addiction. Here it gets so weird that you wonder if it was made up by children high on Slush Puppies.

Firstly, the only thing it has in common with the first half is irritating music – there is no continuity. Secondly…where to begin? The bear in pyjama trousers and a gimp mask? The woman dressed in her grandmother’s curtains pretending to be a snake? The ‘palm reader’ who grabs the hand of an unwilling audience member? Or the woman dressed as a child who combs her mother’s beard whilst having what appears to be a nervous breakdown? She then proceeds to feed her doll slices of cake with candles on them that look (unintentionally, I suspect) likes sex toys.

Based on the programme it seems the concept of the show is a sort of experimental jazz-cabaret extravaganza. Unfortunately the result is laughably bad. I would not wish this catastrophe of a performance on anyone.