Michael Cox reviews Stripped and experiences Traverse Live.
Due to work commitments, my reviewing day started late. However, by the end it felt as if I’d been at it for ages. More on that in a minute.
The day began with a rather curious look at Hannah Chalmers’ one-woman show Stripped (***) at Gilded Balloon. Billed as a look inside the life of an exotic dancer, I’d originally passed on the idea of seeing it (more out of fear that it would be a bit exploitive). However, I’d heard rather positive reports and so decided to try it out, and I’m glad I did.
Yes, it does have a bit of smut in it (repeat—it is set in a strip club) and there are moments that are there more for titillation, but for the most part Stripped is a rather frank and honest look at one woman’s experience as an exotic dancer. It isn’t an hour-long confessional. Rather, Chalmers plays six characters, including dancers, punters and staff, all of whom are important to a young woman who calls herself Baby (after Dirty Dancing, of course).
While the script for Stripped feels a bit pedestrian at times (it isn’t nearly as ‘insightful’ as it wants to be), the story is still interesting and well-told. The biggest find, however, is in Chalmers herself. She is a fantastic performer who not only has great stage appeal but is great at playing multiple roles, and she is a pure pleasure to watch from beginning to end. I might not have thought much of the play itself, but I really did think much of Chalmers’ performance skills; for that, Stripped comes recommended.
Early on, I had decided to forgo seeing the Traverse’s morning programme Impossible Things in favour of experiencing all five plays performed in tandem, which led to the choice of either attending the live broadcast at the Cameo or seeing it at the Traverse itself. More out of curiosity, I chose to go to the Traverse. What I hadn’t anticipated was that seeing Traverse Live (***) at its home would lead to watching two productions at once.
First, there were the five one-acts. While there wasn’t a bad one among them, they were certainly of varying quality. David Eldridge’s All is Vanity (***) began the evening. The play can only be described as a lazy version of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf with its verbal battle between two married couples. Funny zingers saved the play from ridiculousness, but it was still a disappointment. From a weak link to the strongest, Simon Stephens’ T5 (****) was a powerhouse monologue of a woman in emotional crisis. Marina Carr’s Quartet (***), about a diplomat and his three romantic relationships, came across as charming and full of wit and class but disintegrated a bit when contemplated afterwards. Linda McLean’s verbatim-based play This is Water (**) may have seemed like a good idea and had four very good actors but was so tedious that I had to will myself to stay awake. The final play, Enda Walsh’s My Friend Duplicity (***) seemed like a very good piece but was unfortunately upstaged by the second production running concurrently.
And that production was the actual filming of the event. The audience were warned at the beginning that the cameras would be moving around the stage all evening and that there would be moments of waiting to allow for pre-recorded interviews with the writers to play in the cinemas (interviews we were unable to see), but the live recording turned into a rather eventful production in itself. Watching the camera operators move about was one thing, but their tendency to unknowingly whack audience members with their snaking cords was another, and the collective dodge from the audience at times looked like mini Mexican waves. Continuous countdowns to live transmission were also given, but these countdowns seemed rather chaotic, with jumps from ‘five seconds to air’ then changing to ‘sixty seconds’ creating unintentional comic relief.
But if I’m going to remember anything from the evening, it will be the unintentional war between actors and technicians during My Friend Duplicity. Actors Niall Buggy and Olga Wehrly had to deal with the fact that the cameras were much closer to their bodies than they were to the actors of the other pieces, but they also had the extra hurdle of a headset gone wrong. I’m still not quite sure what had happened, but one of the camera operators must have had the volume up to 11 because all you could hear for the first five minutes was the director yelling commands. It got to the point that the other operators did what they could, even flamboyantly waving their hands in the air, gesturing, grimacing and over-enthusiastically lipping different words and warnings. It took a few minutes, but the volume was finally fixed.
Whether those in the cinemas heard a peep or not, I have no idea. But it will always be the technical show that I remember most about Traverse Live. And even as the audience filtered out of the theatre, it was to the constant chants of ‘mind the wires’ ‘look out’ ‘don’t trip’ and the like. An interesting experience, and I do sincerely hope that it was a success for the Traverse. However, if they do decide to broadcast live again, I shall elect to be in the cinema next time.
That’s it for the week. I’ll have a final set of reviews when I see Songbird, Teenage Riot and Sin Sangre on Saturday.
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