Get a Round is a show about friendship and going out. Its basic premise is to re-enact a night out with the audience – getting us to down shots and appear in selfies – though the focus remains on the three performers, who we watch as they vomit into buckets, injure themselves, eat bags of Wotsits, talk over-enthusiastically about politics and generally (though happily) self-destruct.
Get a Round sits somewhere between a Clare McIntyre play, an experimental performance piece (of the kind you’d expect to see from Made in China) and an episode of Take Me Out… It has a subtle but deep rooted feminist politics in its insistence on talking in a non-judgmental, frank and affectionate way about what it means to be a twenty something woman. It also has a cool, clean, punky aesthetic, with a bit of an anarchic edge. And at the same time it somehow avoids being worthy or pretentious – with its inveterately accessible, Saturday night TV feel.
There’s an implicit acceptance in Get a Round that there’s something tragic about the fact that nights out getting smashed form the high points of most of our lives – and the way that this seems to stem from and reflect a wider societal and spiritual brokenness. And yet at the same time, Get a Round has a give-a-fuck attitude, finding bucket loads to love and to celebrate in all this hot mess.
Fatalistic, hella fun.