PERFORMANCE & COMEDY

The Ustinov, Bath (Sat 4 Feb)

THEATRE If you’ve ever walked through the city centre around, say, trashed o’clock and witnessed Babylon – known nationally as The Weekend – or if you’ve been the street producer, bless you, of post-pub projectile slidey liquids, then you’ll want to raise a glass and another and another – whoa there, slow down – and smile of recognition for ‘Thirsty’.

Making a welcome return to the Ustinov is Leeds-based company The Paper Birds, this time using their signature fusion of text, movement and live music to explore beneath Daily Rant headlines of Binge Drink Britain. On Fiammetta Horvat’s clever tiled set comprising loo cubicles complete with dripping cistern, we meet two scary drunken ‘hens’, the extended personae of performers Kylie Walsh and Jemma McDonnell (the latter co-directing with Kirsty Housley).

There’s an immediate engagement with the audience, as the duo set out their stall of presenting a non-judgmental show about why we love to drink, with real testimonies of boozy women that aim to explore our national hobby. Yet, while The Paper Birds always prioritise female voices – “when women drink they tend to beat themselves up. When men drink they tend to beat each other up” – these tales avoid becoming chick-skits. What could remain a flat thesis on the page leaps onto the stage (and if at any point during a special session you have believed the toilet was on castors, here’s the proof).

There is an occasional wobble with clarity, meaning that we have to catch up with whose story we’re hearing, but maybe that’s the point: we’re seeing a kind of Everywoman, with a shared experience of something that at the time seems more profound than a mere night on the lash. The smooth physicalisation of sober-to-trollied moves from the euphoric beats of anticipation through to the shedding of inhibition and underwear, ending in vulnerability and the dark places that a loss of control can lead us.

Ultimately, this is not a play that offers deep insight. It doesn’t have anything startlingly new to say. Instead it stacks up the glasses and downs endless rounds with increasing determination, making the drinkers among us witness to our habits. It leaves us to ask if we’re happy to simply celebrate these times as defining nights of loved-up sociability, or whether we want to investigate our motives for not wanting to do them on orange juice.

Excellent live music written and performed by Shane Durrant runs throughout and at first seems incidental but subtly builds its own narrative that underscores the repetitive rhythms of the text and the search to show how drink really feels - how it is to be caught in the ecstatic and ephemeral zone of oblivion. This is where the production shines, creating a choreography of emotion that is original while paying homage to the work of Théatre de Complicité. It’s this essential theatricality that raises the bar (as it were) for small-scale companies with a commitment to big themes. Time, please. (Kerry Hood)

Copyright Kerry Hood 2012