Backstage In Biscuit Land

Backstage In Biscuit Land
Written & devised by Jess Thom, Jess Mabel Jones & Matthew Pountney. Melbourne Festival, presented in association with Theatre Works. Malthouse, Beckett Theatre. 12 – 16 October 2016.

You walk into the theatre and the atmosphere is warn and relaxed.  It’s as if the show has already started, but it can’t have because the cast is chatting amiably to the audience.  There’s an array of distinctly weird props lined up upstage, including an inflatable dinosaur, ducks dressed as dinosaurs, cloud shaped pillows, a portrait of Mother Theresa and a cut-out tree.  Jess Thom, whom I guess is the ‘star’ of Biscuit Land, is peeping around a flat stage right, grinning and making wisecracks to her ‘assistant’ and co-star, ‘Chopin’ (Jess Mabel Jones – can’t have two Jess’s, too confusing), who’s sprawled in a wheelchair for now, but then goes on to be quick as a whip.  The Auslan interpreter, Jasmine Phillips, is already honing her alertness for what will be an unpredictable often-improvised show.  Jess Thom looks remarkably short… I know it must be Jess Thom because I heard her on ABC RN that morning – and she has that distinctive Tourette’s thing.  ‘Are we ready to start?  Biscuit.  It must be time to start – biscuit – hedgehog – soon.’ 

And soon, everyone in, it does start.  Houselights down.  Jess Thom comes on stage on her knees.  So she’s not short.  The reason is, as she soon tells us, that she can’t really walk anymore – her involuntary movements make her fall over all the time.  She takes over the wheelchair.  She’s an aficionado of wheelchairs.  She talks to us: it’s rambling but coherent – except when her Tourette’s tics take her off in some illogical explosion she can’t help.  Biscuit. Hedgehog!  Ms Phillips is lightening quick with the Auslan: she can change direction almost as quick as Ms Thom – while ‘Chopin’ back chats, holds up the appropriate props and tries to keep the show on the road.  It might look chaotic, but actually it’s controlled by a very aware stagecraft.  It’s also a delightful show, warm, intimate, filled with crazy, sometimes childlike humour.  

It explains and, I guess, to be honest, exploits Ms Thom’s Tourette’s for its absurdities, for the way it couples completely disparate and unexpected words and ideas.  Sex and sex with animals comes into it a bit.  There’s a riff on wheelchairs.  And Mother Theresa.  B-team UK celebrities come into it.  A lot of it is what you might call ‘boldly meaningless’ - random word associations - even while being irresistibly funny.  There’s some audience participation and real biscuits are handed around.  But it’s not all laughs.  There are what Ms Thom and ‘Chopin’ call ‘serious bits’ and this is where Ms Thom explains not just what Tourette’s is, but what it’s like to live with it.  She seems so hugely cheerful that we can see she’s learned to live with the disability, with her life being curtailed.  The problem is the discriminatory attitudes – and remarks and actions – of others.  Such as going to a show and being stashed in the sound booth so as not to ‘disturb’ others – so she’s decided to be the show.  In fact, discrimination against disability is an underlying ‘message’ – and there are people with disabilities in the audience: deaf folks – hence the Auslan – but also blind people and those whose bodies just won’t do as they’re told.

Both Ms Thom and ‘Chopin’ are hugely engaging performers - and so is Ms Phillips.  They know exactly what they’re to their Auslan interpreter.  Ms Thom gleefully tells the audience, ‘And we’ve got her for a week – under contract!’  And she holds up her hands as if bound at the wrists  Ms Phillips gamely does keep up – I suspect with some improvisations of her own – watch her sign, for instance, ‘swallowing my hair’.

Only 10% of those with Tourette’s Syndrome – which is a neurological disorder – have the symptoms most folks think of as the condition of all Tourette’s sufferers.  That is, uncontrollable outbursts of obscene words (copralalia).  For most, it’s not that; it’s ringing in the ears, or involuntary ‘tics’ – blinking, coughing, twitching, small gestures, innocent but inappropriate words – like biscuit or hedgehog or dinosaur.  Ms Thom keeps involuntarily whacking herself in the chest; so she wears padded gloves.  For some small percentage of other sufferers it might be an involuntary repetition of the words of others (echolalia) or repetition of one’s own (palilalia).  The condition does not affect intelligence and it’s not life threatening – it’s just clearly life-inconveniencing and life-inhibiting to a high degree!  Jess Thom, too bad for her, has got the lot – except maybe the echolalia and the palilalia.  Nevertheless, she has convincingly ‘risen above it’: she sees the humour, the ridiculousness, the absurdity even – and you’ve got to laugh, haven’t you?  She does - and Chopin and the audience laugh with her.

Michael Brindley

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