★★★★

“The chemistry between the two is electric”

Dottie and Shirley look like they’ve stepped straight out of a 1950s homemaker advert; perfect dresses, perfect hair, and the kind of fixed smiles that make you wonder what they’re hiding.

Fringe First-winners Xhloe and Natasha bring their signature mix of clowning, movement, and dark humour to a story that starts in a spotless kitchen and spirals into something far stranger. Shirley is scrubbing the chess board floor when Dottie drops by to return a casserole dish. They exchange polite, clipped small talk, moving with the mechanical precision of music box dolls. Somewhere upstairs, unseen footsteps creak. We never find out who (or what) they belong to, but we’re instantly on edge at this ominous presence which seems to frighten them both.

The scene plays again. And again. Each time the words are the same, but the mood shifts: warmth melts into desperation, cheerfulness into dread. It’s a masterclass in pacing and control, the pair able to flick from humour to skin-prickling in a heartbeat, the tragi-comedy of the clowning perfectly captured in their delivery.

Between these loops come bursts of stylised movement, transforming everyday gestures into playful, sometimes violent, dance. Contemporary rap beats rub shoulders with nostalgic tunes. At one point they’re on the table, legs entwined, discussing which part of the other they’d eat first. Later they’re kissing with wild abandon. Are they friends, lovers, or something else entirely? The piece never tells you outright, and that mystery is part of the thrill.

The attention to detail is exceptional. Every tilt of the head, every flicker of the eyes, is part of the story. The chemistry between the two is electric, and the trust they share on stage lets them take the audience right to the edge of comedy and fear without losing balance.

Beyond the clowning, it’s clear that both performers are also exceptional actors, managing to convey the underlying subtext that’s progressively creeping under the surface of the dialogue. It’s a brilliantly crafted performance, and retains the superb integrity, slickness and self-awareness that the duo have shown in their other work.

With a neat 50-minute run time, it feels like the piece could benefit from an extra ten minutes or so to go a little deeper, but what they manage in the time is gripping and unsettling. It’s a strange, stylised, surreal take on the role and anxieties of women in America, and despite the 50s setting, it feels disturbingly contemporary; like one of them is having a nightmare that we’ve somehow all got stuck in.

WHAT IF THEY ATE THE BABY?

Soho Theatre

★★★★★

“The clever dialogue is Pinteresque, full of ambiguity, uncertainty and with an unsettling sense of threat”

New York-based artists, Xhloe Rice and Natasha Roland reprise their Edinburgh Fringe First Award-winning show from 2023 and from this first London performance, that win was well deserved. Because this show is simply sixty minutes of onstage perfection – sassy, snappy and sexy. Described as a “radical, queer dystopia”, the two dynamic co-writers and performers play two 1950’s American housewives, near neighbours in a suspicious American suburb where everyone is peeking through the curtains.

The neon colours of the simple set – blue wooden chairs around a central table and a salmon pink window frame set at a jaunty angle – shine out in the intimate black box theatre space (Lighting Designer, Angelo Sagnelli). Shirley (Natasha Roland) is scrubbing the black and white chequerboard flooring whilst a spaghetti lunch is cooking in the oven. There comes a knock on the door which Shirley is scared to open, but it is only Dotty (Xhloe Rice) from down the road who, ostensibly, has come to return a casserole dish. A power struggle ensues between the two on who gets to hold the dish. The two ladies are dressed in near identical frocks: Shirley in yellow, Dotty in pink – doll-like in appearance, red circles painted on their cheeks, a parody of the stereotypical post-war American housewife. Their conversation is a delightful exaggeration of the banalities of polite intercourse, the couple mirroring each other both in words and actions.

Then strange things begin to happen. We see the same repeated scene over and over, with subtle changes so that we mistrust what we understood was happening. The straight scenes are interpolated with pseudo-dance pieces, movement to music – electronica, techno and rap – out of period with the previous tone. Scenes first interpreted as Shirley’s lesbian fantasies appear to be something more significant after all and as the couple whisper to each other amidst the rave, it appears this is the only safe time for them to truly communicate.

The precise dance steps of the two actors in these scenes, perfect in their synchronicity, are a joy to watch and the pair provide a masterclass in mirroring.

The clever dialogue is Pinteresque, full of ambiguity, uncertainty and with an unsettling sense of threat. Why is Shirley so scared of repeated knocks on the door? What is making the footstep noises from upstairs? Just how much time does Dotty spend in Shirley’s house? What is the mystery of Mrs Nobokov across the road who may have been “taken in”? Each set of dialogue raises more questions until we are ultimately led (should have seen it coming…) to the final question that is the title of the play. Leaving the theatre, there are no obvious answers but much to think on about living in a surveillance society.

Tag Archives: Xhloe Rice

WHAT IF THEY ATE THE BABY?

★★★★

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

WHAT IF THEY ATE THE BABY?

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

★★★★

“The chemistry between the two is electric”