AN EXPERIMENTAL PIECE ABOUT LOSS AND FALLING APART, BUT WITHOUT A BIT MORE HOLDING IT TOGETHER, IT WAS HARD TO FULLY LET GO

By Maddie Battersby ⭐⭐⭐ | Press Invite

The front door in the opening scene of Laura Grillo’s “What Would Jarvis Do?” is number 96, in a possible nod to the year we’re in. Best friends and Jarvis Cocker super-fans Didi and GG are on the hunt for Jarvis’s trousers. They’ve been sold a pair – inexplicably, by their therapist, but they think it’s fake. They want the real ones. The front door opens (several times) and we step inside to an increasingly bizarre world, where things don’t make sense. They are searching for meaning – and truth. In many ways, the audience is too.

The show is experimental and absurdist. There is an egg, a banana, and some whipped cream. Someone puts a napkin over their face under their glasses. There is an abundance of trousers, none of which are the ones they want. The Pulp songs playing during set changes, become increasingly garbled and buffeted, as though coming from somewhere far away and broken. Scenes repeat and fragment. Characters contract themselves. Lines that earlier didn’t make sense, become anchors in spiralling scenes. If there’s a moment where things shift from absurdist to chaotic, I can’t identify it. Perhaps that’s the point.

The cast embrace things and each actor brings something special. Isabel Butt, in the role of GG, is hilarious, holding both GG’s hopefulness and haplessness, with perfect timing. Annabel Smith, in the role of Didi, packs an emotional punch, emoting yearning and frustration. Together, they deliver a thoughtful portrayal of friendship and fandom. The therapist, Ms Lacy, is played commandingly by Maggie Daniels. I was left wondering whether the character’s vocation was intentional. Ms Lacy has apparently sold them a fake, and so I found myself wondering whether it’s a metaphor for the role of therapy generally. Ms Lacy invites the pair into her home, where things just get weirder and weirder. Henry Miller as Ms Lacy’s husband Mister, brings the slapstick and portrays him as confused as we are, in a brilliant way. Ms Lacy’s son Christopher, arrives with very little context, played by Gigi Zahir. I’d have loved to have seen more of Zahir, who delivers an unexplained sort of micro-performance, perhaps about performance itself – but like everything in this play, I’m just not sure.

There are a lot of objects. Trays of drinks. Hats, with surprises. Cake. Lots of trousers. We have lots of things we don’t want, and not a lot of what we do. There is something profound happening here around loss and nostalgia, but deeper meaning is boxed in by the absurdism. There is an astonishing momentary reference to GG and Didi’s mental health, but it is not picked up again. I would have loved more of the background to this. It left me wondering whether this is a play that says that sometimes some things are just too painful to confront; the escapism is the safety here. There are some very funny lines, but occasionally, the jokes felt uncomfortable. At times, I felt a bit like I’d stumbled bleary eyed literally into a late night 90’s TV show. By the end, the set somewhat resembled an afters too.

This is an experimental piece about loss and falling apart, but without a bit more holding it together, it was hard to fully let go.

What Would Jarvis Do? is running at Omnibus Clapham until Friday 16 October.

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Photo Credit: Harry Chapman