June 22, 2011
I’m always a little wary of one-person shows. At their best, they let a solo performer shine, demonstrating the breadth of their talent in an intimate, personal setting. At worst, you’re trapped in a room with a friendless nutter exploring human sexuality through interpretative dance. Tiny waves of dread began lapping through my brain when the lights came up. Rosalind Adler, the solitary star of the show, stood before us, slightly mad eyes staring into the audience, a fixed grin on her face. The enthusiastic title, Jubilate! and the choral music in the background already suggested a kind of cultish intensity- would any of us ever leave Copa’s upstairs function room alive?
Fortunately, it turned not to be Rosalind at all, but Anna. She's our hostess for the evening, organiser of an “Everything Explained” course to educate the inhabitants of the parish, and as close to Lucrezia Borgia as you can get while still being a vicar’s wife. Over the next 50 minutes, we learned about Anna through the lives of the course’s attendees- ranging from a chavvy single-grandmum to a plummy-voiced yoga lover, a desperate housewife trapped in a loveless marriage to a desperate spinster trapped caring for her demented mother- all ably acted by Adler, of course.
Actually, we learned quite a lot about Anna in just the first few sentences of her presentation. “I don’t have any problem with homosexuality, but of course it is an abomination.” Or, bringing her uniquely sensitive touch to parenthood: “Some people damage their children deliberately, by getting divorced.” Anna’s gloriously monstrous, a self-obsessed, self-satisfied, selfish ball of spite and pride, dripping poison in the ears of her parishioners like a kind of Anglican Iago. Anna packs a parent off to a care home, telling the dutiful daughter that “Altruism is just self-indulgence in disguise.” It’s a pleasure to hate her.
As you can probably tell, Adler’s acting gets under your skin. Her characters are stereotypical, occasionally verging on caricatures, but this doesn’t detract from her performance. Assisted by a few swift costume changes (nicely covered by prerecorded dialogues that segue from one soliloquy to another), her voice, her manner, her delivery and her body all contort to display the latest fragile psyche waiting for the hammer of Anna’s help. I did find some roles a bit broad- the sink-estate dwelling mother, mocking the audience’s middle-class condescension towards the “common”, skewered this irony neatly.
So, a pleasant, well-performed character comedy, all bitter vicarage suppers and gentle class tension? There’s a used needle in the lucky dip, as we discover about halfway through the show. I don’t want to spoil the delicate reveal, but a streak of comedy more bleak than black runs through Jubilate! “Life is grotesque” murmurs one character, and as the play goes on I was forced to agree with her. We start with the easy laughs of the new age tambourine-shaker’s mid-life crisis relieved by kitchen-table sex with her plumber (“And afterwards, my table really felt happier for the experience, you know?”) We end with distinctly uneasy laughs as we discover just how damaged the characters are. Even the final sting in the tale, immensely satisfying as it is, doesn’t leave you quite shouting for joy. Tragically funny, darkly comic and surprisingly thoughtful, this is one to watch.
Fortunately, it turned not to be Rosalind at all, but Anna. She's our hostess for the evening, organiser of an “Everything Explained” course to educate the inhabitants of the parish, and as close to Lucrezia Borgia as you can get while still being a vicar’s wife. Over the next 50 minutes, we learned about Anna through the lives of the course’s attendees- ranging from a chavvy single-grandmum to a plummy-voiced yoga lover, a desperate housewife trapped in a loveless marriage to a desperate spinster trapped caring for her demented mother- all ably acted by Adler, of course.
Actually, we learned quite a lot about Anna in just the first few sentences of her presentation. “I don’t have any problem with homosexuality, but of course it is an abomination.” Or, bringing her uniquely sensitive touch to parenthood: “Some people damage their children deliberately, by getting divorced.” Anna’s gloriously monstrous, a self-obsessed, self-satisfied, selfish ball of spite and pride, dripping poison in the ears of her parishioners like a kind of Anglican Iago. Anna packs a parent off to a care home, telling the dutiful daughter that “Altruism is just self-indulgence in disguise.” It’s a pleasure to hate her.
As you can probably tell, Adler’s acting gets under your skin. Her characters are stereotypical, occasionally verging on caricatures, but this doesn’t detract from her performance. Assisted by a few swift costume changes (nicely covered by prerecorded dialogues that segue from one soliloquy to another), her voice, her manner, her delivery and her body all contort to display the latest fragile psyche waiting for the hammer of Anna’s help. I did find some roles a bit broad- the sink-estate dwelling mother, mocking the audience’s middle-class condescension towards the “common”, skewered this irony neatly.
So, a pleasant, well-performed character comedy, all bitter vicarage suppers and gentle class tension? There’s a used needle in the lucky dip, as we discover about halfway through the show. I don’t want to spoil the delicate reveal, but a streak of comedy more bleak than black runs through Jubilate! “Life is grotesque” murmurs one character, and as the play goes on I was forced to agree with her. We start with the easy laughs of the new age tambourine-shaker’s mid-life crisis relieved by kitchen-table sex with her plumber (“And afterwards, my table really felt happier for the experience, you know?”) We end with distinctly uneasy laughs as we discover just how damaged the characters are. Even the final sting in the tale, immensely satisfying as it is, doesn’t leave you quite shouting for joy. Tragically funny, darkly comic and surprisingly thoughtful, this is one to watch.