Up The Duff
Salvation Army, 92 Vivian St, Wellington
09/02/2007 - 13/02/2007
Production Details
Written and performed by Ingrid Berry
Directed by Sally Richards
“She’s gone to a good home” they said, “You’ll get over it” they were told. We’re not talking kittens.
A girl finds herself in trouble, up the duff, a bun in the oven… Fallen. What would you do if the stick stripe turned blue and you became ‘one of the statistics’? Today we’ve got WINZ Waiting Womb, but in the 1950’s there was just one option: Adoption. If Brash had his way it might be the same today.
Up the Duff is a solo show that takes a satirical look at teen pregnancy, adoption and the ‘moral danger’ of both fertility and infertility in the 1950’s and today.
Actor Ingrid Berry got a taste for the Fringe Festival last year when she performed in 32 Flavours at BATS, following Fringe she played major roles in The Corset Stays at the Gryphon Theatre and The Comedy of Errors at Studio 77.
Director Sally Richards has a fascination with solo performance. She has recently completed her Master of Theatre Arts in Directing and is currently doing preliminary performance research for her PhD on solo performance.
Theatre , Solo ,
40 mins
Premature birth
Review by John Smythe 10th Feb 2007
The idea of comparing and contrasting similar experiences in different generations looks like a good one in principle but it’s quite a challenge to make work it in production (see my review of Generations), especially in solo performance.
Written and performed by Ingrid Berry and directed by Sally Richards, Up The Duff may have entered its third trimester of development but it has yet to emerge fully formed, both in text and production.
The dual storyline aspect is not clearly established but left to the audience to work out for themselves. Eventually it turns out we are tracing and comparing the experiences of unexpectedly expectant teenage mothers Maureen, in the late 1950s or early ’60s, and Rose, around now.
In a hodgepodge of theatrical styles, the progress of each girl’s story is patched together with commentary from neighbours, would-be adoptive mothers and various institutional voices. Because both central characters are often absent from scenes, the play places them in the third person, which means subjective perception is not available as a rationale for some of the creative decisions.
The different attitudes to teenage pregnancy, sex education, pre-natal preparation, birth and adoption do come through, however, and when Berry’s relaxed and true performance persona comes to the fore she delivers moments of insight that are both witty and poignant.
But over all, as directed and performed on opening night, it all looks like too much for one actress to carry, with transitions from one character to another too often involving unnecessary changes of costume and/or long walks to take up a new position. Again, the lack of a central viewpoint or two renders the performing conventions arbitrary and rather contrived.
Devices that do work – in and of themselves – include slipping in and out of clothes on the line (as a way of adopting just two of the many characters), and using particular props and character voices to help us distinguish the others. A watermelon is well utilised too, especially when it is demonstrated how it may pass through a hole the size of a lemon.
An attempt to use shadow-play on a hanging sheet does not work simply because the positioning of light and actor is wrong. This and a number of failed attempts to sing to pre-recorded music pretty well prove the show has opened under-rehearsed.
In short, the birth is premature.
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