We Get It

Within the loose framing device of a television reality show or talent quest, five actors – each going by their real life names – compete for the right to have a career as a performer. They do this under the authoritarian, bullying eye of the blonde cliché ‘compere’ (Emily Tomlins).  Each of the contestants is – quite deliberately and pointedly – a ‘type’ identified by a beauty contest type sash.  Thus Mauriel Spearim, an indigenous actor, has a sash that reads ‘Token’.  Amy Ingram’s sash reads ‘Funny Bitch’ because she is somewhat bigger than the stereotypical version of acceptable womanhood.  And so on.  If this sounds promising, it is: the satire is clear and sharp.  Unfortunately, in a long evening that comes to seem even longer, things soon fall apart. 

This is a concept show with a message. Although there are occasional sparkles of wit in what becomes increasingly passionate but muddled, turgid and undisciplined, polemic takes over from humour and the perils of a ‘group devised’ presentation (as the program tells us) are all too clear.  Each of the contestants – except, for some reason, Kasia Kaczmarek - gets to deliver some agit-prop directed at the patriarchy and the clichés to which women must conform if they are to have a hope of a career in the performing arts.  Each of the contestants (rather contradictorily) gets to deliver – and well too - a central speech of a famous female character – Medea, Blanche du Bois, Lady Macbeth (this, mysteriously, from Ms Kaczmarek in Polish!), Antigone and Nora Helmer.  I can’t speak for the Polish, but these quotes are a relief - they are not well known for nothing – although they are interrupted and truncated by the compere.

The show reaches a nadir when Emily Tomlins (a co-director with Marcel Dorney) sheds her nasty blonde cliché persona and addresses the audience directly with a lengthy and accusing sermon.  It is intended, I suppose, to make the audience uncomfortable and it does, but not for the reason Ms Tomlins may think.  Finally but perhaps inevitably, an actual man appears on stage.  (He is not identified in the program.)  He takes over the ‘compere’ role but more obviously as a sexist idiot conducting auditions.  By this stage any reference to the reality show with which things began is abandoned.  

I am not just puzzled but dismayed that Rachel Perks one of the writers here after her bold and insightful Angry Sexx of last year.  Comparisons may be odious, but the previous Neon presentation, Patricia Cornelius and Susie Dee’s Shit, has so much more to say about the position of women and says it forcefully, economically and without the overt preaching we suffer here.  We Get It is intent on making sure we- the audience, especially the male audience – get it.  I think we did ‘get it’, but in the spirit of ‘okay – enough already’ as we limped out.  As Henry James cautioned a young and passionate writer, ‘Morality is hot, but Art is icy.’ 

Michael Brindley

image: (L to R) Sonya Suares, Amy Ingram, Kasia Kaczmarek, Maurial Spearim, and Tamiah Bantum. Sarah Walker Photography.