Mid-term meta madness reigns at the Burton Taylor Studio. Last week, Sergio Blanco's play-within-a-play-within-a-coffin When You Pass Over My Tomb gave us a meditation on death so laced with self-referentiality that I left uncertain where truth ended and fiction began.
This week, Oisin Byrne treats us to Unprofessional, a laugh-out-loud meta-comedy that is so stacked with artificial layers of deceptive truth that, this time, I left uncertain whether I myself were fictional or not (I checked with Rob the Front of House Manager on the way out and he gave me a look that instantly returned me to reality).
Unprofessional feels very much like playwright Byrne in relaxed mode. His last play, The Blue Dragon, while still stocked with absurd humour, hit deep with its themes of guilt and unknown destinations. This time he just wants to play with us. But beware. It's like a cat playing with a mouse. We are at his mercy, and he's ready to pounce.
Four actors, Aaron Gelkoff, Caeli Colgan, Jem Hunter and Juliet Taub, play a maelstrom of different characters (including, at times, themselves) as they unpeel the artificial life of a second-rate actor. Just to give you an idea what this feels like, the opening scene features Colgan, Hunter and Gelkoff all chatting together when Gelkoff (in the role of Guy) embarks on an embarrassingly over-the-top, campily gay anecdote (as Hunter says, like a bad impersonation of Alan Carr). As he finishes, Taub enters, and we discover that she is in fact a director, and all the preceding material was actually acted for an advertisement... apart from the fact that Guy was improvising, and no one knew he was going to do all the camp stuff. The scene finishes with Hunter walking off in disgust. And if you think you've got the idea from that, it just gets more meta as it goes along, with phones apparently going off by accident, Guy out of character (so acting as Aaron) while complaining to (real) director Byrne, and a (possibly fake) audience member arriving late and proceeding to put Guy off.
By the end of the show, about half of the action is simply panicked whispering off-stage. But, despite the insane complexity of its structure (it's like the theatrical equivalent of Waddington's Mousetrap game) the audience somehow intuits that there is nothing to get seriously worried about. The irony of Unprofessional is that it's so obviously done with supreme professionalism. So, instead of squirming in embarrassment, we just laugh our heads off.
The whole cast treads an impressively fine line between the twin pits of unbelievability and uncomfortable truth. But special mention must go to Aaron Gelkoff as Guy/Aaron. His set pieces are sheer joy (there's a particularly hilarious scene where he gets his Alexa to play a series of toe-curling 'Affirmations for Actors'). His comic timing and ability to turn on a sixpence from fake rage to genuine puzzlement are dazzling. And I have a funny feeling that, as far as Oxford drama is concerned, he's just getting started.
At the heart of all this hilarity there is a serious theme pumping away like a deeply buried heart. It's about the desperate need to achieve; to believe (even when you know you're fooling yourself) that you have reached your potential; and to accept your own limitations. Bleak, but human.
Unprofessional is a fittingly triumphant show with which Peach Productions bows out of their Oxford career. They have been prolific, experimental, fun, musical, deep on occasions, knowingly shallow on others, and never anything less than outstanding. They deserve to transition into a new phase of 'professional' theatre. It will be hard in the 'real' world, but if anyone can do it, they can.