Briefs: Close Encounters

Christmas in Leicester Square

Reviewed – 14th November 2018

★★★

“These boys from Oz are indeed gorgeous, but they could raise the roof if they got their freak on!”

There was a glittery, glitzy, festive buzz in the Leicester Square Spiegeltent last night. Drinks were flowing and people were clearly out to welcome these ‘seriously gorgeous guys from Oz’ and have a good time. We were promised ‘world circus skills, drop dead gorgeous drag, raucous comedy and trademark punkish swagger’ and the audience appetite was keen.

Briefs: Close Encounters opens with a couple of cute and cheeky dance routines, drawing on and camping up old-school twenties and thirties burlesque traditions – top-hatted gents and chorus girls with flirtatious palm fronds – before we are officially welcomed by the fabulous Shivannah, our emcee for the evening. She is a terrific hostess – with the gorgeous combination of warmth, sass and glamour that characterises the best drag – and her improvised interludes provide some of the highlights of the show. Briefs’ overall conceit (reminiscent of Parliament-Funkadelic’s futuristic mothership) is a little chaotic – ‘someone get these guys a dramaturg’ is one of Shivannah’s best asides – but it really doesn’t matter, given the playful nature of the whole event.

That said, a little tightening-up of the mechanics wouldn’t go amiss. The transitions between acts are often unnecessarily clumsy, and there are too many empty-stage moments, which slow down the pace of the evening, particularly in the first half. Part of the fun of this type of show is that the acts come fast and furious, and there should be a slightly frenetic quality to proceedings for the audience to become caught up in. This momentum starts to build in the second half, post-interval, but should have been there from the get-go. It’s true to say, however, that the performers have only had a few days to get a feel for their audience, and things will almost certainly become faster, bigger, bolder and more raucous as time goes on.

The skill and athleticism of the acrobatics – special mention here to some awesome aerial work from Thomas Worrell – is a delight throughout, and, thanks to some splendidly cheeky costume design, there is plenty of sizzle and sauce to please the punters. The ‘magic’ routine was decidedly under par however, and the evening is full of moments that aren’t pushed to their full potential. Shivannah tells us of Briefs’ origins in a little club in Brisbane ten years ago, and it often feels as if the constraints of a small venue and a more parochial crowd -‘the West End of Brisbane is an industrial estate, not the West End of London’ – are still in place. The queerest performance of the night came from Harry Clayton-Wright, who brought a welcome whiff of mild anarchy to proceedings, and there was also a slight edge of danger to Dale Woodbridge-Brown’s Wonderland-inspired rabbit, but all-in-all, despite the dressing, Briefs feels rather safe and old-fashioned.

Captain Kidd performs his LED hula-hoop routine, towards the end of the show, to Die Antwoord’s tune ‘I fink u freeky’:

Sexy boys

Fancy boys

Playboys

Bad boys

I fink u freeky and I like you a lot.

These boys from Oz are indeed gorgeous, but they could raise the roof if they got their freak on!

Reviewed by Rebecca Crankshaw

Photography by Kate Pardey

Briefs: Close Encounters

Christmas in Leicester Square until 3rd January

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★★

“there was simply not enough here to lift the piece into the realms of truly powerful drama”

Gilded Butterflies is a two-hander, which takes as its focus the plight of a woman prisoner in the US. Inspired by the experience of a Death Row survivor, it aims, as the programme notes explain, ‘to explore what it means to keep an individual’s soul alive in extremely challenging conditions’. The play’s central character – Maggie – is child-like and obviously mentally fragile, and the nature of her crime is such that we are clearly being asked to think about the question of justice for the mentally ill trapped in the American penal system, as well as the taboos surrounding motherhood, and post-natal depression in particular.

The set is stark, consisting of two cell beds, and an occasional grouping of a couple of chairs, and Naomi Baldwin’s sound and lighting design is minimal throughout. Scene changes are signalled by a burst of static white noise, and we occasionally hear (less successfully) the tramp of the prison guards’ feet as they patrol the corridors. The sparsity of the mise-en-scène shines the spotlight on both actors and script, and, despite some excellent work from Francesca McCrohon as Maggie, there was simply not enough here to lift the piece into the realms of truly powerful drama.

Samantha Pain plays three different characters during the course of the piece – a fellow inmate, Maggie’s lawyer, and Maggie’s sister – but, aside from the fact that each woman wears a different jacket, there is no differentiation between these three individuals, either in vocal quality or physicality. Indeed, the physicality felt very under-developed throughout, and it would be interesting to see how much this piece of theatre could grow with the help of a good movement director in the devising process. As it is, it is unclear why Tormented Casserole (the company) have chosen theatre as the medium for this story, when there is so little theatricality in its realisation; it often feels simply like a radio play on its feet.

There are issues with the script too. Aside from a brief moment of vocal frenzy and overlap about half way through the piece, there is precious little pace, tonal or structural variation. There are also moments when the language strays away from the American idiom – no-one in the States would refer to a movie as a film, for example – and these little inconsistencies unfortunately do nothing to help immerse us in this world.

Tormented Casserole have made a serious attempt to tackle some important issues here, but, ultimately, Gilded Butterflies needs an injection of theatre to make it worthy of its stage.

Reviewed by Rebecca Crankshaw

Photography by Rebecca Rayne

Christmas in Leicester Square

Reviewed – 14th November 2018

★★★

“These boys from Oz are indeed gorgeous, but they could raise the roof if they got their freak on!”

Captain Kidd performs his LED hula-hoop routine, towards the end of the show, to Die Antwoord’s tune ‘I fink u freeky’:

Sexy boys

Fancy boys

Playboys

Bad boys

I fink u freeky and I like you a lot.

These boys from Oz are indeed gorgeous, but they could raise the roof if they got their freak on!

Reviewed by Rebecca Crankshaw

Photography by Kate Pardey

Briefs: Close Encounters

Christmas in Leicester Square until 3rd January

Hope Theatre

Reviewed – 8th November 2018

★★

“there was simply not enough here to lift the piece into the realms of truly powerful drama”

Tormented Casserole have made a serious attempt to tackle some important issues here, but, ultimately, Gilded Butterflies needs an injection of theatre to make it worthy of its stage.

Reviewed by Rebecca Crankshaw

Photography by Rebecca Rayne

Gilded Butterflies

Hope Theatre until 24th November

Previously reviewed at this venue: