A sense of Optimism at the Carriageworks

lambs
lambs at the YSP, by author.

Clown is a very British thing; Regency audiences would recognise the archetype quartet of Harlequin, Columbine, Pantaloon and Clown as soon as they walked on stage, as famous as today’s celebrities (but much more enduring characters!). But the sort of performance that is typified by Clown has fallen out of fashion, and it takes a brave theatre company to make a play based on slapstick, exaggerated performance. These days it doesn’t happen; comedy is arch, the fourth wall is never broken, and today’s audiences are jaded, cynical beasts. And yet Fuzzy Logic took that chance, with a new stage show based on a Clown performance, Optimism.

The blurb for Optimism describes it as “a twisted tale of desire and self worth told through the eyes of an idiot”, which made me grin. On arriving at the Carriageworks I was amused to note that instead of musak playing in the auditorium the ambient, keeping the audience happy audio were the sounds of sheep; everybody loves sheep. Of course they do.

The main story is of a slightly foolish, naive woman who falls in love with someone who thinks she’s a bit strange. She decides to change into something he likes – a sheep. She does check to make sure he likes sheep beforehand, but buys into her delusion a little too much, and after being rejected by a sheep-checking machine undertakes a drastic approach to becoming what she thinks he’ll like. This tale is interspersed with four other tales on a similar level, some very simple, and one quite, quite complex.

On first glance the play is a series of vignettes about transformation. It relies heavily on the clownlike performances of the cast, who all play humans wanting to be different animals in an episodic sketch format. Their reasons for desiring to be different are varied, but broken; this is a vitally important distinction, because Optimism is not a happy-go-lucky, bouffon-like performance but a grim tale from the dark side of the human psyche. The way it casts light on places rarely taken out of our heads is inventive; a juxtaposition of deep-rooted existential horror and hilariously over the top delivery. There’s a brief scene where Natalie is horrified at her body; there are real, primal scream moments where she notices her thighs and tummy, which pale into insignificance when she spies her bottom in a mirror. The horror displayed gets stronger and deeper, and the more it is exaggerated the funnier it gets, and the exercises performed as a result are very funny, and even more frantic and hilarous as time goes on.

It takes real skill to pull this off, skills these guys have in spades. In the play they create a microworld, building up the rules of the universe such that by the end of the performance you’ve bought into it completely with the help of subtle cues that were introduced at various points. The surgeons are developed as a staid, placid force; we believe that there is a psychologist talking to a character until the next line is delivered; we totally accept without question that it is acceptable for people to change who they are through medical means and when it goes wrong… it is a trivial thing for people to die.

This, then, is the problem with the darker side of comedy. When is it ok to laugh? This is a grim, grim tale with moments that will make you wonder why you’re laughing, but by the end you’re questioning whether you are supposed to laugh. The love story is touching and hilariously wrong in so many different ways, and during these moments it is understood that laughter is fine. The bedroom scene in particular is hilarious and touchingly well done, with Natalie-as-sheep breaking into the house entirely performed using sound effects (which have her falling over as she runs up the stairs). The funny moments are fine to laugh at but the darker ones find you questioning your reaction, such as the moth’s slow, stately progress towards the light with an inevitable and telegraphed end that is still funny.

Clever use of audiovisual materials in the background help move the play along. This is very much a piece of physical performance theatre, with performers interacting with the background using props and clever use of movement and expression. The “this could have happened” scene was an excellent pastiche of the romance typified by a thousand movies, with the actors playing a whole “conventional” relationship in about fifteen seconds. The captioning was delivered with perfect timing, with the “this is what actually happened” line appearing at the right comedic moment. Again, this shows the skill involved in this performance.

This is not a play for everybody, although the audience was well-mixed. Two people did walk out after one particularly gruesome moment, and although the worst bits are left to the audience imagination the play really does lend every assistance in getting you there. One surgery scene is overlong, although I can understand the technical reasons as to why, and the results are shocking. Once more the audience don’t know whether to laugh or not at the outcome, and whilst a few brave souls did snort nobody laughed outright. The ending is particularly gristly, a perhaps too-dark moment which I’m not sure I agree with. The audience is left wanting a lighter note, to leave the auditorium feeling slightly cheerier. Time taken for applause to start made me think that it could be worth ending on a high, as there would be a definitive end, not one where the crowd look at each other to say “was that it?”

But, overall, this is a great piece of clowning. This sort of performance is physically demanding and mentally draining, and although Clown looks easy it is anything but. The guys did good, I honestly enjoyed the performance and I really hope that we see more from Fuzzy Logic in future.

There’s one more performance of Optimism in its current run; at the Barnsley Civic on April 21st. The performance reviewed was at the Carriageworks in Leeds on April 12th.