It's Uniformation Day @ Zoo Roxy

Uniformation Day undeniably has a feel of Beckett in space. The overall idea is that we are watching a commemorative ceremony taking place in a rocket. The ceremony seems to be part ritual, part game-show, but the presentation of guilt, or the longing for love, or for meaning are only glimpsed haphazardly through far too much information.

Within the gameshow sections, each contestant seems to be on a quest to expunge a weakness - the need for romance, guilt, the desire for happiness -  yet these separate quests seem to apply to all. These are universal themes which lose their immediacy if separated into individual character's quests.

 

So many of the components are terrific but they're trapped in a structure that doesn't let them breath. Alluding to a vast variety of sources, from Space 1999, gameshows, Ballard, Beckett, Alien, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, cosy catastrophes, Barbarella and more, prevents the show gaining coherence.

This is a real shame as Fool's Proof Theatre are highly talented performers: the dancing is ace, the scenes of romantic love -- ending in sadness when it is realised the lover is made of plastic -- are nothing less than beautiful, the sequence of lost purpose, represented by clay rockets on the actor's heads is extremely powerful, the post-apocalyptic diary readings (read by members of the audience) were well done, and it's great to see sheets of visqueen plastic turned into a life-enhancing experience. But unfortunately, the overall message was confusion and a dissipating of the inventiveness and skill of the cast.