Setting out with the objective to investigate British drinking culture from a female point of view, The Paper Birds’ Thirsty is two performers’ look at our love affair with alcohol in twenty-first century Britain. How fitting to see it in Notts.
The performers, Jemma McDonnell and Kylie Walsh, have gone about collecting their show material via some unconventional research methods the setting up of a drunken hotline for the casual inebriate to leave a late night bon mot or, rather more often, a bleary collection of songs, rants, confessions and ‘one-sided debates’. The show does evidently have its roots in what really people think about their relationship with alcohol and whilst wanting to tell the story of all of us who like a drink from time to time, with this data collection method they overwhelmingly found their respondent to be 18-23, out with their mates, for a dance; attempts to tell tales from the others fall by the wayside.
There is nothing wrong with the story of getting so plastered that all you can manage the following day is enveloping yourself in the sofa throw and vomiting through your nose. The wrestle with this is telling that to an audience at a middle class arts centre who, assumedly, don’t go to the theatre to see a vindication of student drinking culture. The performers’ device for this, the set up and continual under cutting of expectation and assumption throughout the piece, does give you a sense of unease at times. The voyeurism is uncomfortable but ultimately contrived.
Equally the didactic leading of the audience through sound – twinkly melancholic piano music for when we should be sad and thumping techno when excited, fading all too quickly when we were meant to think, gave an impression that an audience wouldn’t find a conclusion themselves from the presentation. The only glimpse of possible irony in the sound design was a triumphant Karaoke chorus of Bonnie Tyler to close.
The set, a ladies’ toilet truly beautifully designed by Fiametta Horvat and resplendent with its concealed prop storage spaces, climb through passages and moveable ‘thrones’, became restrictive with much of the physical language of the piece constrained by having to shoehorn in the use of wheelie toilets. Elements of the choreography did work, for example the section when the performers downed and danced until their next drink break getting steadily more uncoordinated, but these were too few to compensate for the over reliance on the set.
The show’s content grated too. The personal timeline section where Jemma and Kylie map out their relationship, from drinking alcopops at university to their more sophisticated present drinking habits, did feel a bit A-Level and that level of personal engagement from the performers in the narrative jarred; they were either investigating their findings or doing a show about their drinking past and habits. Only the experience of the ‘girl’ could end with the grim, piano underscored, serious sexual assault that becomes one of the closing images.
Without wanting to enter into a regrettable feminist argument over remarks being taken out of context, there is always a difficulty in presenting a piece where alcohol clouds judgement in sexual politics and the lack of male voice leaves a partner in consensual sex being painted as something akin to a rapist.
The Paper Birds have put together a show which does investigate a subject that is interesting, why we like a drink, but bogs itself down in a stereotype of female drinking culture. Although there’s no smoke without fire, aren’t there stories more interesting than this? Ultimately the piece is confused. The performers start by saying they want to tell stories other than this one then cave under the weight of student drinking songs and SU bar deals. To approach this show from a high brow, intellectual standpoint is possibly wrong – when was the last time a drunken intellectualisation stood up to sobriety and hindsight?
Any one for a drink? – I’m unsure whether mine’s a pint or a bitter lemon…
Paper Birds performed Thirsty at the Lakeside Arts Centre on Friday 10 February 2012
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