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Bit parts: Garry Starr Performs Everything @swkplay

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Garry Starr Performs Everything is a bare-bones (and bare buttocks) tribute to the theatre. Theatre may be in trouble, and audiences are down, but Garry Starr aims to save the theatre and bring back to the masses every style of theatre possible. As long as each style involves wearing a transparent white leotard or a skimpy thong. And tassels. It's part comedy, part physical comedy and part perv at Gary's physical prowess. The sentiment "if you've got it, flaunt it" applies here. So here we are with a show that has been around for some years and is having its first proper London run at the Southwark Playhouse (Borough) through Christmas. The premise is that Garry Starr (played by Damien Warren-Smith) has left the Royal Shakespeare Company over artistic differences. He is now on a mission to save the theatre from misrepresentation and worthy interpretations by doing things such as a two-minute Hamlet, recreating scenes from a Pinter play using unsuspecting audience

A matter of laughs and death: Good Grief

Another week in lockdown passes. The chances of theatres reopening anytime soon still seem remote. And so experiments with the possibilities for theatrical streams continues with Good Grief. 

Theatre streams have been filmed plays, staged readings or even staged like a zoom meeting. Good Grief plays with the feeling of a staged production. Scene changes and props are moved around on camera and titles pop up on screen to set the scene. 

It opens at the end of a party. It looks like it's been a big night of drinking and going on. But it turns out that it was after a wake. In between sorting out the mess from the party Cat (Sian Clifford) and Adam (Nikesh Patel) stumble around the topic of losing someone they both loved to cancer.

The piece tracks Cat and Adam coming to terms with their loss, their feelings of guilt about leaving things not the way they had hoped. And they're trying to navigate the niceties and expected behaviours following a death in modern Britain. What's the best way to distribute the belongings of someone who has died? Should atheists have funerals in a church? Is pink underwear a sign of moving on?

Clifford and Patel create an intimate and funny portrayal of two people with a past. They're muddling through to find a way forward and move on. With or without shagging each other. There's also an honesty in the writing and performances that draw you into it. And of course, Clifford being of Fleabag fame, gives the piece a jolt of star power.

A piece about Grief and loss, even a funny one, may not be everyone's idea of a good time during a pandemic. But on the other hand, although so many people have died in the past year, it seems abstract. Here death and its impact on those around it is front and centre. 

Written and created by Lorien Haynes and directed by Natalie Abrahami, it is available to stream from 15 February on Original Theatre Online. It’s also worth checking the other productions available to stream on the site as well.

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