THE FRINGE 2011 #1 – Kill, Fuck or Marry: Strip Search, Debbie Does My Dad, and One Handed Show: A History of Pornography
by Alex GruzenbergThere is a special kind of intimacy about witnessing a one-man show, especially at a small venue. Your eyes focus on the protagonist. The individual voice comes to light; the idiosyncratic rhythms of speech gain momentum. Beyond discerning the show’s actual content, you come away feeling like you got to know the person behind the theatrical mask a little better.
For instance, Damola Onadeko made the most positive impression on me, as an actor, dancer and star of Strip Search. Conversely, I found the play unfocused, hollow and kinda naff. Written by Peter Scott-Presland and produced by Homo Promos, it tells the story of Squaddie or, rather, lets its hero narrate his own tale. As a young boy, he wanted to win back his mum’s affections. As a teenager, he began to sell his body to men. As an adult, he went to prison, then the army, then became a stripper. Are you beginning to see a pattern here? Me neither.
I realise that life doesn’t follow a pattern, but fiction must be structured, or at least provide core themes. No melody can survive without a tonic note; no ship can dock without an anchor. The play’s biggest problem is that Squaddie comes nowhere near being a fully-formed character. His storytelling is full of anecdotal details of no consequence that detract from the narrative instead of enriching it. The scenes where he cries on-stage hold no intensity or affective power, despite Onadeko’s best efforts. Melodrama, sex and violence on their own are not moving or meaningful. It’s not enough to say, “This terrible thing happened,” and expect a reaction. The audience must have an emotional investment in the material in order to absorb its dramatic peaks. Only good writing can access that level of engagement, and that’s precisely what Strip Search lacks.
Rather coyly, I have overlooked the production’s biggest draw: its protagonist dances and strips his way into full-frontal nudity. It doesn’t take a genius to guess that Scott-Presland is using striptease as a metaphor for self-exposure. Even for an openly heterosexual man such as myself, Onadeko’s body proved almost hypnotic in its perfection. To grant it artistic merit is another issue.
On the surface, Bobby Gordon’s Debbie Does My Dad utilises the same format – a young man telling his life story in the context of sex – except this story is real and this young man only strips to his underwear in order to tell it. The son of a former US porn star, Bobby struggled with life in the shadows of his father’s member. The standard, make-believe cliché about parents is that they had the least amount of sex to make procreation possible. Gordon Sr. (stage name: Richard Pacheco) is a well-documented exception in this area, and the show is mostly about the ways in which his son learns to deal with it.
The play is as interesting as listening to Bobby discuss his thoughts on sex, love, parenting, porn, sensitivity, masculinity, and empathy. I don’t know about you, but these are some of my favourite topics. Bobby may not be my favourite person, but hey, we’ve just met. His personality exudes an easygoing American charm that refuses to stress you out, even whilst being insecure. The insights here are not particularly deep, except to Bobby himself, but I confess to enjoying them regardless. His father’s advice to “grab your dick” as a solution to all of life’s problems gets more mileage than one might initially expect. His mother’s monologue on the realities of “free love” is kind of heartbreaking: the practical actualisation of ideals usually is. The irony, of course, is that Gordon Jr. has followed his father into acting and show business, albeit in a different medium.
Would this show sell without the tag of “how I learnt to be a man in the shadow of my porn star dad”? Would it be as effective without an introduction from the producer assuring the audience that it was “real”? The answer to both is, probably not. I don’t doubt the genuine nature of the lessons Bobby learnt and decided to share, but I am sceptical about the glaring contradiction at the heart of his act: on one hand, he portrays the trauma of having to answer questions about his father from strangers, while with the other he draws water from the very same well of porn’s ability to masquerade as an inherently fascinating subject.
All this brings us nicely into One Handed Show: A History of Pornography, my last stop on the mini-tour of one-man acts that I saw at the Fringe over the last couple of days. Cumbersome sentence, I know, but it’s late and I’m tired of typing full stops. This is a free comedy performance by Nellie White. She’s sweet, pretty, plump and probably fragrant. Her likes include amateur porn she can identify with. Her dislikes include noisy balls, vaginas that try to escape from themselves and Cosmopolitan magazine. The show has some nice lines delivered rather innocently. It’s not particularly pacey, but there’s titbits and factoids to keep you entertained even when you’re not smiling. Whilst watching it, I treated myself to a nice little pint of Kopparberg cider, simply because it’s a brand that shares a suffix with my surname.
So, let’s draw up some conclusions. If you’re going to write a show about something as ubiquitous as sex and violence, make sure you develop your character(s). If you’re going to write a show about your experiences with shedding the emotional baggage of an ex-porn-star father, make sure you acknowledge the ironic elements present in such an act. If you’re going to babble sweetly about porn, make sure I’m drinking a self-celebratory cider. If you’re going to blog about the mediocre shows you’ve seen so far, make sure there’s some sort of recurring theme tying it all up together.
P.S.: This afternoon, Kate Copstick suggested we come up with a new rating system that did away with ridiculous stars. For the purposes of this piece only, I’m going to suggest a good old game of kill, fuck or marry. This should be easy: I’d kill Squaddie, fuck Nellie, and marry Bobby. Is there anything more intimate than that?
Strip Search. Written by Peter Scott-Presland. Performed by Damola Onadeko. theSpaces at North Bridge, Edinburgh. 8-20 August, 21:05. £10 (£7 concessions) www.homopromos.co.uk/shows/strip2.htm
Debby Does My Dad. Written and performed by Bobby Gordon. Bedlam Theatre, Edinburgh. 5-27 August, 23:00. £8 (£6 concessions) www.debbiedoesmydad.com
One Handed Show: A History of Pornography. Written and performed by Nellie White. The Royal Mile Tavern, Edinburgh. 5-27 August (not 8, 15 or 22), 19:20. FREE www.edfringe.com/whats-on/comedy/one-handed-show-a-history-of-pornography
