Sean Burnett Dugdale-Martin
Pure Grime by Warped Productions is the newest solo show from Em Barrett and is a bouffon-style 60-minutes that seeks to explore humanity’s relationship to death and decay; asking humans to question their own relationship to not only flies, but themselves.
The Gryphon stage is completely black as the audience files in. Some haze in the space and blue lights are all we get to set the grungey scene for what’s to come. I’ll do my best to be appropriate in this review but I must mention that I know Barrett, I know most of the team, and I also do clown in Wellington. I will try not to spoil any of the performance beats or gags as it’s a very physically comedic show and I believe plot spoilers matter less here. The costume is the first we see of the character and it is quite magnificent! The fly is grotesque, its body out of proportion, its appendages too long and sometimes too floppy. This is very typical for bouffon as I understand it, since the heart of it is taking the ugly and making it beautiful. The butthole is a chef's kiss!
Barrett does this well and the moments of pure grime truly are the most joyous to watch! It is in these moments where the performance challenges the audience to watch and to retch I find the most interesting and tantalizing. These are the moments where bouffon stands out amongst its peers and where I think Pure Grime shines amongst the rest of the Fringe Festival. It is simply something so different that you must see it to talk about how “I once saw a show where….”
Between these magic moments, however, is where Barrett sometimes loses me. It's hard for me to explain. The clown character on stage doesn’t really care much if the audience likes what is going on or not, less malevolent and more apathetic. I think this is good and the character needs this punk energy to truly engage with some of the scenes in its hilarious way, but I find it a double-edged sword. It’s refreshing how the fly has this perspective and I relax in longer moments, like where the fly is dancing about something, and it gives me time to appreciate this ugly thing that lives solely for its own enjoyment. I am, however, also finding myself becoming a little bored at times during other transitory moments between larger gags when the fly is more or less enjoying their own company.
There are some moments which were not particularly clear to me. There is a short video montage halfway through the performance of ordinary people on a boat eating which I found jarring, simply because it didn’t appear to have any context. I consider it a missed opportunity to not have the accumulation of set and props used by the character remain on stage for the duration of the performance, in essence building its own mess, almost like a trash-nest. Considering how the piece ends it could be satisfying to see the evolution of waste created by a single organism from beginning to end.
The main thematic narrative of the piece is distorting the line between the Fly character and Bob, a regular man with a wife, job, and a penchant for money. Barrett brings to life this metaphor of capitalistic, consumerists as pesky, stinky insects in a humorous way with many effective mirrors and contrasts, such as both eating something they desire above all else off the floor. I love how the show strongly alludes to humans taking the planet for granted but does not try to preach how to solve this crisis or what regular people can do to fix anything. This show isn’t the answer, it's ridiculing the problem. The abruptness and absolute opinion of this performance is in line with that of its sole character and you can take it or leave!
I wish this show was on longer but unfortunately it only has a three night run at The Gryphon Theatre. More info here.