The Worst of Scottee

The Worst of Scottee
Written & performed by Scottee. Melbourne Fringe. Theatre Works, Acland Street, St Kilda (VIC). 30 September, 1, 2 & 4 October 2014

There’s a brightly lit photo booth on an otherwise dark and empty stage - the usual cubicle with a half curtain, which is drawn.  Under it, we can see half of a bulky man on the stool inside.  There’s also a rectangular screen on the outside wall.  The screen lights up.  There’s a video connection inside.  The screen shows a close-up of the man; he wears dark glasses.  The half curtain is slid aside.  And there he is: Scottee.  He wears a black suit (formal) over a white shirt, but the trousers are shorts (still a boy); the shoes are two tone – black and white (sophisticated, stylish); the black sunglasses huge (a mask). 

 

He turns toward us and the video screen shows him in profile.  He sings an exaggerated, almost parody version of ‘Cry Me A River’.  That sets the tone of irony, of ambiguity and his ambivalence about the experiences he will relate.  He has a good voice.  He is compelling.  You never take your eyes off him.  As he sings, black liquid pours from behind the dark glasses, down his face and onto his shirt and suit.  So his ‘tears’ are exaggerated too.  Some of the audience doesn’t seem to know what to make of it: they laugh loudly with that evasive, uneasy laughter that is often a response to what is sad, painful or incomprehensible.  There is much sadness and pain to come in this show – and as it rolls on, the laughter peters out.  There is humour, albeit of an uneasy kind – for instance, the description of the ambience and the patrons of a lesbian bar.  But this show isn’t comedy.  By the end, there is silence.  But is the audience awed, moved or beaten into psychic submission?

 

Scottee goes on to remove his sunglasses, to sing more songs and to take off his black suit.  He tells four stories about his past – his life on a housing estate north of London from when he is six or seven through to eighteen.  Each story is punctuated by his closing the booth’s curtain and a flash as a ‘new photo’ is taken.  New photo, new story, new version of Scottee.

 

As the title of the show suggests, these stories purport to tell the ‘worst’ of Scottee.  The stories he tells may be ‘true’ - that is, ‘true confessions’ - or they may be fictions, but there is no doubt we are to take them as true – that is they ‘really happened’.  His ‘worst’, however, is not so horrifically evil – more misdemeanor than crime.  The stories, each skillfully told so as to build tension, are tales of lying, of sexual confusion, of addiction to food (Scottee several times calls himself ‘fat’), of irresponsibility, of unjust persecution and exclusion, and of abandonment.  

 

But what is the motive behind these confessions?  (Others have remarked on the photo booth being reminiscent of a confessional – but there is no reference whatever to religion in the show.)  Is it a masochistic desire to humiliate himself (or the creation ‘Scottee’) by laying himself bare with searing honesty?  Is there also an element of accusation of the audience for their complicity in cruelty and intolerance?  Or an implicit criticism of the audience for their ghoulish ‘sympathy’?  

 

He intersperses the stories with comment via artless interviews with women from his past on the external video screen.  These people appear to talk lightly about Scottee and to care much less than he does about his ‘worst’.  

 

With a fine sense of dramatic judgement, the stories are not chronological.  In one story he is 17 and his parents move away from London.  They make it clear that he is not to go with them, that he not included in their new life.  He is left on the housing estate alone.  In the next story, however, he is only 13 and accused of rape of another boy.  His parents, particularly his mother, support him fiercely.  What changed?  We are not told.  Did he go too far?  Was his mother loyal once and once only?

 

In the 17-year-old story, Scottee is called before his employers because of some casual if blatant irresponsibility.  In his defence, he lies that he has AIDS and, sobbing, makes the accusation, ‘You don’t know what goes on in my life!’  On one level, that is quite true: his employers don’t know what goes on in his life.  On another level, Scottee counts on that accusation to excite sympathy, even pity, so he won’t get fired.  He gets fired.  Of course he does.  He’s the rueful loser, the fuck-up and the victim.  It’s sad.  And sort of funny at the same time.

 

That’s the ambiguity – an intriguing even entertaining ambiguity - which colours the whole show – right up to the final song.  There, Scottee finally emerges from the photo booth, dressed now in a sort of infant’s romper suit and socks.  He produces a folded piece of paper – from his sock - and sings deliberately badly about regret.  Is this another irony when previously he has sung so well?   Is he denying that he is sorry, but denying in such a way that he is asserting that he is sorry for his worst – or for revealing it to the audience?  Or is he having a go at the audience (again) for falling for his ‘poor me’ routine when he doesn’t think he’s ‘poor me’ at all? 

 

Scottee returns to Melbourne with this show (he was here for Midsumma), directed by Chris Goode.  Other credits are not available, but one suspects all aspects of design are down to Scottee himself.  The show divides audiences: some are enraptured by its honesty; others react against its manipulations.  The show has received high praise here and four stars from the UK Guardian and The Scotsman at the Edinburgh Fringe.  The praise is deserved.  Whatever its motive or intent, Scottee’s charisma and dramatic skill are clear.  For all its subtle and intentional ambiguities, The Worst of Scottee is undeniably original, confronting and disturbing – as well as a manipulative assault on the audience’s sympathies and political correctness.   

 

Michael Brindley

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