Tag Archives: VAULT Festival 2019

Feed
★★★★

VAULT Festival

Feed

Feed

The Vaults

Reviewed – 7th March 2019

★★★★

 

“an innovative, disturbing, sharply relevant piece that implicates viewers in the content they watch”

 

If you’ve ever wondered what being online would look like as a staged performance, then Theatre Témoin are one step ahead – they’ve replicated the internet in this pitch-black comedy devised by the cast (Jonathan Peck, Louise Lee, Esmee Marsh, Yasmine Yagchi) and directed by Ailin Conant. The storylines are constantly disrupted by bite-size, gif-like moments: Peck skips by in a neon green bodysuit. Lee and Marsh wear giant duck-head masks while playing golf. Windows light up at the edges of the stage for sidebar ads. The performers often freeze, rewind, and repeat, as though someone is editing a YouTube video.

While Feed may have brilliantly captured the chaos of the internet, the play is not the total anarchy its aesthetic suggests. This show is highly intentional, skilfully crafted, and very clever about communicating its message, which condemns fake internet activism: the people who vie for followers and fame by generating shallow sympathy (crying emoji) for tragic causes.

The story centres around a news article about a murdered four-year-old Palestinian boy named Nabil. The article goes viral, and its author, Kate, receives an avalanche of new followers. Eager to use her new celebrity for good (or perhaps just high on the attention), Kate becomes an extreme internet activist. Kate’s technology-averse girlfriend Clem watches helplessly as Kate becomes so obsessed with ‘likes’ and ‘views’ that she loses touch with reality.

Meanwhile, beauty vlogger Mia, moved by Kate’s article, posts a heartfelt message about Nabil and the situation in the Middle East. Mia quickly becomes the voice of justice for Nabil, #FeelForNabil. To continue to raise awareness for the plight of Palestinians (or perhaps to keep her spot in the limelight), Mia resorts to increasingly ‘shocking’ stunts for her vlog posts, including cutting her arm and painting her face with blood. Mia and Kate’s stories switch back and forth, sometimes so fast it feels like toggling between tabs.

On set, long blue drain hoses are used to represent ethernet cables. They wrap around the space, and eventually around the characters themselves. At the beginning, there’s a scene involving an argument about foie gras vs. the vegan faux gras. And at the end, when Kate has one of the hoses in her mouth, it’s a shrewd visual metaphor that perhaps we are all overfed content that advertisers (or more ominous sources) use to extract money and data from us.

As both Kate and Mia spiral out of control, the play escalates to a frenetic pace, becoming more and more outrageous and gory in its bid to keep our attention. The ads increase too, triggered by the characters’ words: ‘Pain’ sets off a commercial for Nurofen. ‘Talk’ gives us an ad for ‘TalkTalk’ – an ingenious mimicry of the algorithm for targeted ads.

Feed is an innovative, disturbing, sharply relevant piece that implicates viewers in the content they watch. Theatre Témoin is warning us all to wake up and smell the foie gras.

 

Reviewed by Addison Waite

Photography courtesy  Theatre Témoin

 

Vault Festival 2019

Feed

Part of VAULT Festival 2019

 

 

 

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How Eva Von Schnippisch Won WWII
★★★★

VAULT Festival

How Eva Von Schnippisch Won WWII

How Eva Von Schnippisch Won WWII

The Vaults

Reviewed – 7th March 2019

★★★★

 

“an irrepressible seductress with a majestic survival instinct and unstoppable line of filthy wit”

 

Who doesn’t like an hour of vintage hedonism and moral decay after work? Reliving the Weimer republic of 1920s Germany at the VAULT festival is Eva Von Schnippisch, one of a number of Variety Show personas created by comedian and events producer, Stephanie Ware. The show is the confected musical backstory of Eva, a character that has already worked the UK’s club and ‘luxury event’ circuit for six years as a hireable ‘Madame of Ceremonies’. Billed as setting history straight, the evening commences with a stage set with a dressing screen festooned with feather boas and period millinery on one side, Sally Bowles’ chair and accoutrements on the other, with Eva (or is it Stephanie at this point?) clad in silk dressing gown, warming up the crowd as they arrive.

As she slips out of the gown and into character, Eva tells of her hair-raising rise from blow jobs in Berlin to threesomes with the big H (the child-friendly matinee version of the show must either be very different or very short). In between, she is enrolled by British Intelligence, parachuted into occupied France, captured by the Russians, before receiving her ultimate mission to infiltrate the social scene at Berchtesgaden. Throughout her various assassinations and assignations, Eva pines for a purer life in a Bavarian log cabin, giving a welcome glimpse into Eva’s softer side, but most of the time she is an irrepressible seductress with a majestic survival instinct and unstoppable line of filthy wit.

Stephanie Ware’s script sizzles like a frankfurter and Oliver Collier’s music matches her numerous on-stage skills adroitly. She can narrate while she gyrates, crack gags under interrogation, mix manic costume changes with Germanic ad libs while still retaining enough breath to sing like Brunhilde. As a persona, Eva’s true back story as an imperious handler of late-night crowds leaves her bereft of depth and complexity. The blurb for Eva’s compere services says that she can be fine-tuned between secret agent and Cabaret act as desired, but then, not being too particular is Eva’s style. Her forte is pleasing crowds, and the crowd joined in the audience participation whenever they were asked, or, more accurately, commanded.

 

Reviewed by Dominic Gettins

Photography by Stuart Hendry

 

Vault Festival 2019

How Eva Von Schnippisch Won WWII

Part of VAULT Festival 2019

 

 

 

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