BabyshadS have done it again. They have created an hour-long, visually exciting piece of theatre that combines art installation, song, dance, sophisticated technical effects, and their own flamboyant style of surrealistic humour.

It is all set in a gleaming white art gallery displaying three installations, while working away in a corner are two excellent musicians: Tristan Carter and Takumi Motokawa.

The first installation is Gay Man (Jake Preval), looking like something out of a Pierre & Gilles photograph and is surrounded by a mound of black, silver and gray sequined objects.

The second is Fascinating Woman (Sherilee Kahui) who pops up out of what appears to be a patchwork teapot but is probably a patchwork breast. She has a thing about her breasts. She even sports an umbrella decorated with bras.

The third is Death (Milo Haigh) who sits high above the stage with the entrance to eternity through her legs. She is as immobile as the other two installations until three devils (Cerberus?) appear and start to do her bidding, which involves them taunting the Gay Man and the Fascinating Woman in scenes of black farce about AIDS, nuclear bombs, and everyone’s obsessions with fashion, the perfect body, and money.

The show’s publicity tells us that Death learns that charm is not enough to liberate her from a society compelled to institutionalize ideals and identities in order to maintain control.

I am glad the publicity told us that because there is just one large snag amongst all the supposedly outrageous satirical campery: some of it is hard to follow because of poor diction, poor projection, and inadequate amplification. However, despite the over-familiar territory that it covers, the revue is imaginatively presented and technically (microphone apart) it’s a triumph.
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Here we go again on the devised theatre* debate; specifically, its tendency to produce shows that suffer from premature performance syndrome. Put it this way: if BabyshadS’ Charm Is Not Enough had been offered in script form, exactly as seen on opening night, would a prospective producer, director, venue manger, etc have thought it was ready to go into production?

The six performers are co-credited as Devisers, Director Hannah K Clarke is not and there is no dramaturg (or something similar) credited, so we can only guess as to the dynamics of its evolution towards production and performance.

The premise is fine: "The liberation army has disbanded," a media release announces. "Feminism was ‘just a phase’. In the aftermath of Revolution has anything changed?" The programme distils it thus: "Welcome to the Art Gallery. Here you will see a gay man, a woman and Death all struggling to forge an identity for themselves in the wake of revolution and the decay of complacency."

Definitely intriguing, although ambiguous: does it mean complacency is a form of decay or complacency itself is decaying? As I recall, it was a rejection of predictable, conservative, socio-economic security that eroded our complacency as the Baby Boomers’ Revolution took hold.

The complacency being confronted here is what has immobilised a self-obsessed and politically apathetic Generation Y. They seem to envy us our Revolution and the revitalised sense of collective identity it offered, not least because it allowed us to stand for something bigger than ourselves. Hey, we changed the world! What will they be remembered for?  

Rich soil, to be sure, in which to grow a show. And rich poetic text, too – what I hear of it. The trouble is a lot is subsumed by the live music, on opening night anyway, so the odd gem or nugget that might have more clearly articulated their quest is lost. So if you don’t come with foreknowledge of the premise, and keep it in mind, you too may get lost.

Death (Milo Haigh) presides from on high, upstage centre, sepulchral, black-frocked, her voluminous skirts framing a red-trimmed entrance-cum-exit. More Freudian than Freidan?

The exhibits in the Art Gallery are a pile of rubble, sequin-studded, with the odd high heel, purse and mirror ball among them, and a huge patchwork teapot. By way of a prologue the Chorus (Jaci Gwaliasi, Tessa Martin and Patrick Powdrell), clad head-to-toe in white body suits (redolent of the Sperms in Woody Allen’s All You Ever Wanted To Know About Sex) set the scene in dance, as people viewing the exhibits.

Gleefully they tug a long line of partly burned bras, seemingly endless until it stops and is hauled back whence it came (i.e. the teapot). This will have metaphorical resonance for those who have read the bumph and know the revolutionary significance of that image.

Fascinating Woman (Sherilee Kahui) arises within the teapot, which continues to enclose her, and shades herself with brolly made from brassiere cups. From amid the glinting rubble the Gay Man (Jake Preval) arises, all glossy lips and naked-torso … He too remains trapped.

Death’s first big number, with which the Chorus dances, tells us there is no need to be afraid, after all 27,500 human beings die every day. Then a man encased – entangled? entrapped? – in a huge $ sign (Powdrell) gives an account of himself (as per the Morality Plays of olde?) and his exit is an entry into the aforementioned skirt-framed cavity. Death, then, is a ‘back to the womb’ experience; a process of becoming ‘unborn’? …

Another ‘dollar man’ (Gwaliasi), toting a gold-toothed mouth-like briefcase, seeks to purchase the Gay Man exhibit provided certain changes are made, and Gay Man’s "I’m not for sale!" protests are gob-stopped so that negotiations can proceed. A song about salmon, beef and liberty follows … and I’m getting lost again …

Other areas theatricalised with great style and flair include: gay parenting v the threat of school bullying; junk food v fresh fruit and veg; media appetites for personal trauma; the temptation of toxic substances v their lethal qualities; the quest for freedom-centric experiences v the looming ovarian use-by date … It would be a spoiler to further describe the memorable images these sequences feature.  

Video imagery (VJ: Hamish Guthrey) adds to the visual mix, although its relevance to anything else happening at the time rarely becomes apparent to me. And the design elements are superb (Kathryn Tyree: costume design & set dressing; Sally Ogle: set design & construction; Milo Haigh & Jake Preval, design; Jimmy Sutcliffe: lighting design & operation, props maker).

The music (by Tristan Carter and Takumi Motokawa, alternating with Ben Woods) is rich and powerful, if not in good balance with the vocals at times.

There are flashes of conceptual brilliance, too: Mr A Bomb, hirsute with mushroom cloud, saying "Death was like a mother to me"; the actual death of Death, where Death delivers her own eulogy … A bit of a mind-bender, that one, but fascinating to contemplate.

It all plays out as a series of performance art statements, somewhat linked thematically but not yet coalesced as an accumulating whole that transcends its component parts. It’s an array of ideas, mixed up a bit and often made oblique to avoid being obvious, but yet to achieve the ‘chemical change’ that would make it a unified work of resonant substance.

Maybe that’s not important to BabyshadS. Or maybe this work is purposely indicative of the lack of focus and greater meaning they assert is the lot of their generation. But I can’t help feeling that if someone had been charged with the dramaturgical responsibility of turning this buffet into a gourmet banquet, all that wonderful creativity and commitment would deliver more satisfying fare.

What I find myself puzzling over most, in retrospect, is how Death came to have such a prominent role, given the premise. Is she there as an ever-present option for young people unable to find motivation for entering the next phase of adulthood? Does she stand as a warning that our lives are finite, so getting on with it is quite important? Or have I missed something crucial here?

These theatre artists, who are quite experienced now, are clearly intelligent, questing and creative. That’s why I wish what they have to offer could reach its full potential rather than simply get laid out as a wacky theatrical romp.
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*See the forums Creating by Writing and/or Devising and Who owns devised work?
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