Swan?

Postcard Review by Caroline Russell-King

Show – Swan?

Playwright/composer – Lauren Brady with snippets of lyrics from 3 pop songs.

Production Company/Theatre space – Bad Knees Studios, Heywire Production, One Yellow Rabit, High Performance Rodeo / Vertigo Studio Theatre.

Length – 65 minutes (no intermission)

Genre/s – Absurdist clown ballet fantasy with audience participation.

Premise – A swan turns into a woman who lives in a pond, tells us stuff, and dances.

Why this play? Why now? – This looked freshly plucked from a Fringe circuit.

Curiosities – I wondered if I was the only person who had the need to know what was going on.

Notable moment - The bullrush.

Notable writing – The story was devoid of Aristotelian structure, but it did have a climax. The swan/woman/creature masturbates a bullrush which ejaculates all over her. The whole piece seems masturbatory, in that it may have felt better for the person doing it rather than those of us watching. This piece works well with educated liberals as we can all feel smart humming Tchaikovsky. There are illusive scraps of swan imagery referenced in popular culture. This piece seemed rooted in trauma, with bad owls that force swans into threesomes, and a mother who died of heartache and the creature who threatens to blow her head off with a pistol. As an audience participant I was ceremoniously presented with two cigarette butts - so the evening wasn’t a total waste.

Notable performances – Brady’s two strengths are dancing en pointe and being flirty and winsome with male audience members who go up on stage to interact with the concept of the hero. Prior to the show, the audience is asked for their idea of a hero to be written on slips of paper and given to the creature who then symbolically barfs them up in performance. The first slip of paper read “magnanimous” the pronunciation of which didn’t fly. (I had written “anyone who defeats Trump”, which would have been interesting to see incorporated.)

Notable design/Production – There are two small mounds that have bullrushes on them, along with cigarette butts, an e-cigarette, a spray bottle (for tears - an audience member sprays the performer), a cross and her box, which is tight and wet, in not-so-subtle inuendo.

Notable direction – Self-directed.

One reason to see this show – To confirm I’m not making this up.