Lucy and her partner are having a performance of a party and we are all invited. It is the Number 1: the Plaza by GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN at the Cambridge Junction. Lucy waves to us through her imaginary window, behind which we find her universe, the octagon of her London flat: door, bathroom, living room, couch, kitchen, door, bathroom, living room and soon. It is a strange post-feminist party performed by bubbly uber-feminine and stereotypically young- blond Lucy and her partner, master of one-liners, grunts and economical offences.
You may glide between the layers of performance. There is the performance of a party, and show tunes, which act as deliberately awkward but quite frankly beautifully sang and marvellously ironic glue between scenes. One may experience a strange sense of déjà vu, and take a moment to reminisce about the duo’s last performance Big Hits, which as the title suggests was about “showbiz” .
More layers to come as Lucy’s bubbliness transforms into exaggerated submissiveness, and she is made to jump around and hide her, well yes, shit. As the performance goes on, the simple downwards spiral structure of the performance sucks you in. Slowly, the window is closed and the performers start to strip of their masks: the hair extensions come off, then the social mask. At the same time, the party gets smaller and smaller the audience less involved and at the end it is just the bare performers. Stripping reveals an unequal relation during which equality only strikes momentarily when the performers alternate in “doing”, routine-like pleasing of each other. The removal of social mask is followed by that of clothes, a flashback to submissive Lucy in stereotypical pornographic poses and a final cleansing shower.
As Lucy washes of her “performing Lucy” mask, and all the shit that comes with being, we are left to wonder about this complex yet silly show that unsurprisingly does not bite as much as we may think. I still wonder, how much more brutal and less layered the show would have been if Lucy’s partner was not performed by young woman in a skin-tight long red dress, but by a man?
Hi Kata,
ReplyDeleteThis is really interesting. First off, you write with a real sense of pop and ping, which is great. It’s a really enjoyable thing to read. You draw out a really interesting side of the performance - the point about when the window closes is really astute - but I wonder if you just need to round the thinking process off and tell us, kind of outright, what you felt the performance was up to overall. (The answer, probably, is lots of things, almost too many to list in full.) Anyway, I really enjoyed reading this. Thanks.