Gabriela Munoz is delightful. In a theatre tradition dominated by men, she brings a raucous female clown to the stage with total panache. (For those of you not so sure about what I mean by ‘clown’, think less children’s party, more Mr Bean.)

Munoz’s ‘Greta’ is a dreamer, waiting ever-so impatiently for the moment when her ‘one’ will appear and sweep her off her feet. She flounces about her house in a flamboyant wedding dress and Einstein-esque hair, practising for the big day. There are some incredibly funny moments – some great use of cream in particular – which really should be seen live rather than described here.

Her waiting about the house routine is all a lead-in, however, to the big laughs, which involve some fabulous audience participation as wedding guests and… (spoiler alert) a real-life groom! Toilet paper and trash cleverly transform our audience members into the wedding party, and the ‘volunteers’ don’t disappoint with their appointed roles and expected ‘lines’ of dialogue.

Munoz handles an almost over-willing groom with virtuosity on this particular night. We performers know that an over-zealous audience volunteer can make things incredibly difficult – as the comedy of clowning relies most heavily on failure, and the reluctance/embarrassment of the person asked to do odd and silly things. However, it works, and the hunky surfer ‘groom’ thankfully plays really well into Munoz’s act.

I haven’t laughed so hard for quite some time. The awkward bridesmaid, attempts at kisses, getting the groom drunk, the first dance, the post party courtship … Just a few of the utterly hysterical moments. Munoz has a natural ability for this comedy, with a raise of an eyebrow she has us laughing, and it is clear she is a skilled student of the LeCoq tradition.

Unfortunately there is a ‘but’, and more unfortunately it has nothing to do with the calibre of this show. The Crystal Palace is a really poor choice of venue for this work. It feels oversold, and I’d say more than a third of the audience, myself included, can’t see half of the action. This means that anything on stage under high waist level, or sitting down, is obscured by the sea of heads. This includes the tender ‘heart-breaking’ ending, which is completely lost on me as I just can’t see what is happening.

My review may have been different had I been seated in the first three or four rows, but it looks like anyone further back is either craning their head, trying to stand up or leaving their seats to stand at the bar and watch. It is a huge disappointment. Had I been a paying audience member I would have been peeved to pay premium price for such poor seats, especially when it truly is a fantastic show.

If you are going today, and you should, I recommend going really early to sit up the front, otherwise stand up at the bar. If not you will miss what is a great piece of clowning. Wonderful work, I hope to see more of her. Next time in a more appropriate venue where everyone can enjoy her show to the fullest.

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Solo performances are the dominant feature of the final week of the Fringe Festival, with two very different shows currently playing at Bats Theatre, but both having an underlying theme of loneliness.

From Mexico is Gabriela Munoz with her exceptionally original Perhaps, Perhaps…Quizas.

In something of a tour-de-force, Munoz spends an hour on stage without saying a word, apart from a few musical sounds.  But such is the power and uniqueness of her performance that she is totally engaging and extraordinarily funny. [More] 

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Perhaps is a single performer clown show.  Gabriela Muñoz plays Greta, a lonely woman desperate for love.  And it’s the clarity of Greta’s desires, how she self-sabotages, and Muñoz’s ability to set up a series of incrementally more risky invitations that makes this show sing. 

Muñoz looks like a mashup of Queen Elizabeth I, with her heavy white paint and small red lips, Mrs Havisham, with her deeply distressed wedding dress, and Johnny Depp’s Mad Hatter, with her super frizzed-up hair.  She’s at once familiar and totally out of sync with where we are as she sits under her lacy curtain, delicately munching strawberries. 

After a short silent video – complete with player piano reel score and Chaplin-era film distressing – displays Greta’s many failed attempts at romance and connection, Greta opens her curtain and discovers her audience waiting expectantly.  Her arched eyebrows and astonished peeks revealing first surprise, then, as she scans specific audience members, a range of responses from anxiety, fear, disdain, and delight. 

From the start, the Greta character is clearly painted.  She’s like an imperious three-year-old who has a million invisible rules for how to play with her toys.  She keeps trying to get others to play along then reacts with dismay, disdain or shock at the disastrous results. 

The game Greta wants to play, with the deadly earnestness of a three-year-old playing with her My Little Ponies, is the game of getting married.  First she enacts the ritual of marriage, on her own, then with our help, then with an empty suit, before pulling a potential partner from the audience to assist. 

It is in her handling of the audience that I first start to really get the genius of Muñoz’s clowning.  She’s an expert at setting up a clear situation and the fact that we have a part in it, waiting and waiting for us to catch on, while leaving the exact thing we’re supposed to do unclear.  It’s a complete inversion of Thomas Monckton’s performance in The Pianist, where he was constantly physically off-balance.  Greta is always tightly controlled, shoulders set and back arched proudly, while we are constantly caught out and surprised. 

We struggle constantly to figure out the task set for us and how to do it.  An early attempt at singing ‘Here Comes the Bride’ goes totally awry, prompting another disbelieving eyebrow raise. And we are all howling with laughter at our collective ineptitude, and the ridiculousness of Greta’s judgement. I am in awe of Muñoz’s ability to set thing up so we can laugh both with and at her and at ourselves.  It’s incredible.

And Muñoz is constantly upping the level of risk for herself! Muñoz reads the room beautifully.  She teases and flirts with several audience members, both shy and forthright.  Each of them is somehow lacking, dismissed in their turn – one after he had joined her onstage!

When she’s got her man and several other helpers onstage, Greta has another go at the wedding.  Our experience switches from trying to figure out where we’re going with this, to how far can Muñoz convince her collaborators to go with her. 

Pretty damn far, it turns out.  After finally having a successful wedding, bride and groom return to Greta’s home, and a game of newlyweds chicken ensues.  Who will be the first to balk at the intimacy? 

Like every three-year-old, though, Greta soon hits a point where the play is no longer enough.  Having convinced her man to join her on the couch, and even to give some small kisses, she starts to prepare for something more [spoiler averted]. 

It’s a moment that would be so easy to overplay, but Muñoz doesn’t.  [Spoiler averted]  The intimacy she has been chasing is defeated by her own imperfections.  And all the imperious games are revealed as an attempt to hide this overriding body shame.  It is heart-wrenching.

Perhaps, Perhaps, Quizás ends rather hopefully, as Greta turns her tear streaked face to her husband.  We finally see the biggest risk of the performance [spoiler averted] before the rest of us mihi to the work with a standing ovation.  It is brave, it is well-crafted, it is side-splittingly funny, and it is sad.  It is wonderful.

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