Girls Girls Glas(s)
If, as Luther Blisset suggests in Death of Hermeneutics, performance is merely the mirror in which the reviewer sees themselves, I am not sure that I like the unshaven, dishevelled reflection that is staring back. I woke up with this morning with helium-filled balloons on my ceiling, an unidentifiable liquid in a glass by my head and a memory of sitting on the floor in the GFT bar, surrounded by broken glass and a smashed table. I raised my glass to the assembled Glasgow Film Festival guests and heard somebody shout “The Skinny’s in the house.”
It started so gently. I arrived at the Art Club for Life Long. Glas(s), following their triumph with Chip, had devised a work that mimicked an anniversary celebration. Ronnie and Tillie have been married for 52 years. Over ninety minutes, they looked back on their happiness, their early courtship, getting old together and sadnesses.
A traditional review would suggest that Life Long embraces comfortable myths and deals in sentimentality, avoiding difficult questions about gender relationships. Yet this is to utterly miss the point. By putting real people on stage, by letting them tell their story in their way, with only a few skilful concessions to theatricality, Glas(s) have discovered a way to bypass the artificiality of performance, and tell a true story that is heartfelt and honest.
The howling reflection in the mirror is simultaneously bawling and ashamed of itself. Ronnie and Tillie are winning: not in an actorly manner, but sincerely. Their mutual affection is obvious and they naturally argue for the important of long intimacy. Through compromises, hard work and respect, they have maintained a close connection, and Life Long shares their joy with a select audience. There is a genuine warmth in Glas(s)’ productions, one that demands a new critical response. They also avoid the usual sturm und drang of contemporary performance.
I slip away when the dancing starts to the Tron for Girls Girls Girls. A loose mixture of song, poetry and comedy, it proves that the West Coast cabaret revival is more than burlesque and rough decadence. Compared to Spangled, which rocks the Rio café on the first Monday of the month, Girls Girls Girls is polite: in place of striptease and intense rock is acoustic folk and mellow jazz. Cora Bisset, better known as one of Scotland’s finest actors, turns in a set that recalls Kristen Hersh’s more coherent moments and Natalie Toyne revisits standards with vocal dexterity and subtle jazz irony.
After that, events become a blur. There is some dubstep in a basement, a colleague telling me that they don’t trust me, plastic glasses of champagne, an Ikea table breaking beneath my weight. My current one man show, “The Well of Loneliness” is now booking for children’s parties.