Over My Dad’s Body ☆☆☆☆
The Vault Festival
When Simon David opens by mounting a glittery ladder and singing a big brassy rendition of ‘I’m gay, I’m gay, I’m gay’ containing the line ‘I don’t have a personality – beyond my sexuality’ it does create a certain set of expectations about what is about to be seen. They are not that this piece of theatre will attempt to answer some of life’s biggest questions. And that’s why its genius.
Whether it’s his sequined pant suit, the audacity to wear a beret without being the slightest bit French or the way he chases the spotlight across the stage singing ‘Me, Myself and Si’ we are set up to believe we are about to spend an evening enjoying Simon’s favorite topic – and obviously it’s Simon.
Barely 10 minutes in the audience is also starting to find Simon their favorite topic. It’s a joyful ode to narcissism with jokes, broadwayish numbers with a gay twist (if that isn’t redundant) and a self-involved Dating game show parody where the other person on the date is very much surplus to requirements. This is definitely a one man show.
At each point David is both a master of stage \craft while being able to mock its conventions. He uses a stage technique, and then points out that he has used a technique, and then slides back into using it without ruining its effect.
It’s with the audience in the palm of his hand that David tells us about his dad. His dad who had a diagnosis of terminal cancer and decide to complete a bucket list prior to death. Horrifyingly to selfish Simon this included the desire by his father to perform a one man show of his own. His father felt that dying with anything left unsaid would be a too final disappointment.
With his father’s single show captured on video David is able to edit and interact with it. The comparison between David’s own vainglorious act and the final testimony from his dad about what he has learnt in life is a funny and heartbreaking lesson. His father telling us what life means to him becomes the most eloquent way of telling us what he meant to Simon.
So it’s a show within a show, about a life within a life. The Me, Myself and Si show would have been fun on its own, but the surprising flip in focus is what makes it great.
UNTIL FEB 1st
http://www.vaultfestival.com
Review by Andrew HebdenQueerguru Correspondent ANDREW HEBDEN is a MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES graduate spending his career between London, Beijing and NYC as an expert in media and social trends. As part of the expanding minimalist FIRE movement he recently returned to the UK and lives in Soho. He devotes as much time as possible to the movies, theatre and the gym. His favorite thing is to try something (anything) new every day.
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