The Bird Flu Diaries, a brilliant play not to be sneezed at!
By cellarscene
- 2122 reads
The Bird Flu Diaries are not to be sneezed at!
http://www.edfringe.com/shows/detail.php?action=shows&id=BIRDF
http://www.myspace.com/thebirdfludiaries
A play not to be sneezed at, although you'll be choking with laughter¦ Sarah Solemani and Olivia Poulet have done it with this one, by far the most entertaining and relevant contemporary theatre I have seen, at the Fringe or elsewhere.
The Bird Flu Diaries uses the onset of the next plague as the pretext for serving us a cross-section of Blair's Brave New UK, 2006. The actors' range and versatility is fully exploited by their beautifully honed ” rapier-edged ” and balanced script. Poulet (French for chicken, which she certainly isn't!) and Solemani conjure a series of female partnerships, each relationship its own delicious mix of companionship and rivalry, the characters instantly recognisable from our streets or TV screens, at times frighteningly convincing.
The death-obsessed West Country Goths in black gowns ride a tandem to their glorious end in the local Lido, the one at the front unwittingly doing all the pedalling as they discuss which animals best embody the beautiful spirit of Goth death. The besuited and sharp (Sky?) newscasters instantly switch from coarse discussion of their childbirth experiences to po-faced intensity as they talk about the latest bird flu "incentive scheme (send a video to the show and win a place in Tony's bird flu "blunker) and the horrors of the developing plague, turning with military synchrony to face one imaginary camera after another. The "banter between them points at a bitter rivalry that later has them hurling lines of news at each other like weapons before an eventual surprisingly moving reconciliation. The airhead schoolgirls in their tent with their hair-crimping money-raising scheme win our hearts before being exposed as¦ I loved all the characters but my favourites were the middle-class students, the one cynical, politically aware and immune to celebrity culture to the extent of mispronouncing "Beyoncé, the other completely suckered by it, and touchingly enamoured of both the aforementioned singer and Jamie Oliver, her picture of her hero alongside her flatmate's obligatory Che Guevara. The political lecturer, clearly informed by Solemani's days at Cambridge studying politics, hilariously lets her jealousy over a student's love affair intrude into her exposition of the role of women in the Second International.
I won't spoil it for you by telling you how the apparently separate characters and plot lines coalesce, but something more needs to be said about the themes of the play. Here is a valiant stab at the heart of our trivialising celebrity-dominated and sensationalising mass media. Our dangerously volatile attitude to children ("aren't-they-lovely-little-dears/"string-up-the-little-monsters) is beautifully satirised. The self-interested manipulation and exploitation of the masses by the wealthy and powerful is subtly but clearly exposed as "privatisation is Newspeak-ed out of existence.
Contributing to the play's impact no less than the script and the acting are the clever staging, simple set (full credit to Rachel Pelly and Rose Gardner) and use of the background video screen, the latter variously carrying the plot forward, serving as a prop (the student's posters) or as an entertaining diversion as the performers change (a pigeon's head bobbing along to some menacing music).
In summary, while feathers are a recurrent motif in this brilliant piece, with an abundance of wit on several levels they are superfluous when it comes to tickling you into laughter.
(Oh, I forgot to say¦ Kevin Spacey is crucified. We'll allow the luvvies an in-joke, presumably a dig at his being artistic director of the Old Vic as well as acting in the shows there.)
- Log in to post comments