Typically I am not a fan of cabaret acts, but Amy Gordon (aka Amy G)'s show is very unlike any typical cabaret act. How many have you seen where the lead performer dons a full chicken mask and costume? Yeah, there was nothing traditional about this show.
Amy began the evening by explaining to us how her life has been full of "shameful" moments. However, rather than let them get her down, she has chosen to highlight and showcase them as part of her show. Personal catharsis through performance. And whether her embarrassment was based on her physical self (she opened with an act where she kept removing layer after layer of fake breasts) or based on pissing off the judges on Germany's Got Talent, Amy truly lets it all hang out.
Her overall level of skill was masterful. She sang beautifully, kicked higher than a Rockette and performed some amazing clown work on roller-skates, convincingly pretending to almost fall on her face. Her audience interaction was also hysterical, as she repeatedly calls back to the one special (and in this show's case, gay) man who she designates as her love interest throughout the show. She embraces the ridiculous, which is the overall theme of her show: to accept and celebrate the shameful parts of your life. She is clearly unafraid of playing to the extreme as her closing act displays, when she casually begins to play America the Beautiful on a kazoo in a very non-traditional way.
If there was one thing that seemed lacking, at times it appeared that the character of "Amy G" was so strong that I didn't really believe that she suffers from any shame. Her larger than life personality has so absorbed these embarrassments that she doesn't really seem affected by them. One true moment of vulnerability appeared when her wireless mic started to break down during a song. For a minute, I felt I glimpsed the real Amy Gordon. However, instead of really sharing her frustration, she tried to hide it behind a bigger smile and because of that her performance felt more like an act than a true sharing of shame. That is far from a complaint, as Amy G overall kept me laughing, fully entertained and challenged to bring a much stronger A-game to any performance work I do from here on.
Life After Death
Of all the shows I saw in the festival, Mary and Harry Johnson succeeded most in keeping me on the literal edge of my seat. Their jokes were hilarious, their acrobatics impressive and they expertly kept the audience unsure of the reality that they were watching. The show began with an almost too-cute strobe driven, silent movie style car scene, where our two main characters get into a deadly accident. They have an artistic death, that hints at the crudeness that is to come, and lands them in heaven? hell? purgatory? we don't really know. It's their after-life, which ironically enough is a theatre with an audience. Great, with those plot points out of the way, it's time to play. And I haven't seen two clowns play to the extreme onstage more than Mary and Harry.
They pushed deep into the land of the taboo, and took the entire audience along with them on the ride. Many of their acts involved audience interaction and through intimidation, bribery and affection they encouraged their "volunteers" to join in their world of insanity. So as not to be defined as a merely obscene show, many of their pieces were balanced out with skills in acrobatics, movement, music and performance art. My favorite moments were when we dropped out of the world of the lewd (which were gut-wrenchingly hysterical) and suddenly found ourselves in these beautiful moments of real art. The juxtaposition of incest jokes with Shakespearean poetry itself had such wonderful incongruity that I was left paralyzed to watch, impulsively react, and be taken for a joyous ride.
It is often said that clowns bear a striking similarity to children. Mary and Harry definitely feel like the misfit troublemakers who were just a little too aggressive and mature to be the class clown. Yet even when running around the audience completely naked and fuming with anger, you couldn't help but laugh at their youthful ignorance and innocence. As I said, they appeared onstage ready to play, and we were lucky enough to be there to share in the fun.
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