Lipstick: A Fairy Tale of Modern Iran ☆☆
Omnibus Theatre
I really, really wanted to like this. Great, I thought, once I’d read the blurb, a play exploring Iran’s queer subculture, about a boy who transforms every night into a beautiful woman. I was looking forward to it and invited a queer Iranian friend along, certain that we were in for a treat. But what we got was a rather unfocused, unnecessarily tricksy mess.
The general consensus amongst the theatre practitioners I know is that pre-recorded voice-overs are to be avoided like the plague. This production relies on them throughout, starting with an engaging monologue delivered by Siobhan O’Kelly in her rich Irish accent and lip-synched by Mark (Nathan Kiley/Topsie Redfern). Fleetingly, promisingly, I was put in mind of Beckett’s “Not I”. But the trouble with lip synching is that unless you can do it as well as, say, Dickie Beau, or The Lipsinkers, or the grand dame Lypsinka, it just falls flat on its face. At its best it can convince you that that voice is coming from that body, right here right now. If it doesn’t achieve that the spell is broken and it is simply a clunky, embarrassing theatrical add on.
There were times when I didn’t even know why it was being used and began to wonder if the actor was mute, but then in the musical numbers he seemed to be singing live. The voicemail messages in particular, were ill-conceived. Equally, there seemed no reason to have a runway protruding into the auditorium other than to give audience members neck ache.
At no time did the two bodies occupying the stage seem to interact, so that what emerges are two parallel monologues, which began to solidify into a conflict of ideologies that I found somewhat reductive and simplistic, playing into the hands of those critics of Iran who back US military action against Iran in order to bring ‘freedom and democracy’ to its people, like we did in Iraq…..
It’s a brave playwright who will base an entire play on their experience of a few weeks inside an alien culture. Writer/director Sarah Chew gets across some powerful messages (“having a body is a political act”) and is clearly brave enough to tackle heavy material. All of this is admirable. Unfortunately, there’s so much going on here that I was left confused and slightly irritated, particularly by the Orientalist stereotypes around the West/Iran.
Here, The West is represented by shallow drag queen, Mark, who has the freedom to get gang-banged in a sling at a sex club whilst his sugar daddy watches, and the freedom to dismiss Middle Eastern politics as boring. This narrative contrasts with what Orla experiences on her trip to Tehran, where she meets feisty but ‘repressed’ Iranian women, some of whom even look at her lustfully, but ultimately must tow the patriarchal line and cover themselves up.
Into these two narrative strands is thrown another: an unnecessary scenario in which Orla and Mark are talking to a group of school girls. The result is a long slog before the play reaches any kind of climax, its one saving grace the energetic and eminently watchable O’Kelly.
I couldn’t help thinking this should have been written as a one-person show for her – something along the lines of work by Starving Artists in the 1990s, where actor Mark Pinkosh would hold you enraptured as he transmogrified from one character to another as his narrative progressed. I wanted something much less cluttered. Even the drag felt old-hat, in no way reflecting the vibrant, subversive drag scene in London, but more reminiscent of the 1960s. More Danny La Rue than Johnny Woo.
I’m sure there’s a brilliant story to be told about Chew’s experiences working in Tehran, but this isn’t it. Whilst its intentions are good, the execution left much to be desired.
https://www.omnibus-clapham.org/lipstick/ Until March 24th
Review by Jonathan KempQueerguru London Correspondent Jonathan Kemp writes fiction and non-fiction and teaches creative writing at Middlesex University. He is the author of two novels – London Triptych (2010), which won the 2011 Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award, and Ghosting (2015) – and the short-story collection Twentysix. (2011, all published by Myriad Editions). Non-fiction works include The Penetrated Male (2012) and Homotopia?: Gay Identity, Sameness and the Politics of Desire (2015, both Punctum Books).
Labels: 2019, Jonathan Kemp, London Theatre, review
