Pancake Opus 100

Sandra Fiona Long comes down the La Mama stairs and stands half turned away in the corner.  She’s tentative, scared and almost apologetic.  An authoritarian voice comes from the PA system, ordering Ms Long to display a list of various emotions, ending with Love.  The audience will love Love, says the voice.  Ms Long has a comic stab at it – the exaggerated effort plain to see – but of course ‘emotions’ disconnected from any context, situation, action or person are meaningless, so how can she possibly convey them? 

But she does convey them; she finds ways to convey them – and that is the meat of this sweet (but modest) little show.  As she says in her program note: it’s ‘about not being perfect, about living with the pressures of daily life, and about love.’

At the centre of the playing space is an illuminated kitchen bench.  (The mood matching lighting is by Bronwyn Pringle, who also designed the show with Emily Barrie.)  An array of pots and pans and kitchen utensils dangles dangerously above.  There’s something magical about this bench: it changes colours and lights up ingredients and Ms Long.  Behind the bench, she changes one apron after another as she changes characters and performs some zany, clownish movies that are funny, but more touching than funny. 

Through a series of quite disparate vignettes Ms Long suggests not just those required emotions but a need to reach out, to connect and to be liked – and by the audience too.  There’s an undercurrent of uncertainty and loneliness.  The uncertainty is calculated.  The loneliness is felt.  The latter becomes explicit when, in one sketch, a single mother takes the transgressive step of confessing to her twelve year old daughter that she’s lonely.  To the audience’s relief, Mummy gets a cuddle.  In another sketch, two prospective sexual partners (both cleverly played by Ms Long) size each other up.  No, it’s not going to work… In another, she cleans her teeth – literally – while an encouraging parental voice from the PA tells us we’re at the beach and then repeats, ‘Jump… over the wave!  Jump… over the wave!’  I don’t know what emotion this one conveys, any more than I understand the title of the show.

It would be an unforgiveable spoiler for me to reveal how, in the end, Ms Long conveys ‘Love’, but I can say it consists of a tangible, indeed edible, gift to her audience.

Ms Long is clearly an accomplished comic performer in her moves, her delivery and her timing.  A satiric highlight here is her opening the door to the (real) alley outside and going out to enjoy a cigarette while performing some Iyenga yoga moves.  As you can see, this is another show made up of a bit of this and a bit of that, albeit delightful and delivered with charm and skill, but leaving me wishing that Ms Long will one day find material of more substance.

Michael Brindley