Edward Escalope III is a professional experimental theatre critic and cravat reviwer. In his autobiography, 'Avant-Gardeian: Edward Escalope III; The Remaining Defender of The Last True Art Form' he details his passion for 'great' avant-garde productions but claims he has yet to see one.
Last night he was in Camden, London to watch 'Bumble-Wasp' by Alice Raspberry and Stilton Jonathan. Here is his review:
The play opens with only a buzz. Over the course of a quarter-of-an-hour the buzzing grows in intensity until, finally, a man enters in a yellow and black stripped hat who yells obscenities at the audience. He was of course the wasp.
Personally, I dislike buzzing in all forms. Be it a noisy fridge, or winged insect. It always brings back strong memories of my childhood. We lived next to a power-line which hummed and buzzed all night like an angry beetle trapped in a bell jar. I would find it impossible to sleep. "Mother, mother," I would cry out into the darkness, "make it stop!" But mother would never come, and buzzing would never stop, until, finally, I would pass out from exhaustion. Due to this, I found it impossible to enjoy this opening. I was not the only one. At one point, Stilton Jonathan singled out a gentleman with a beard and bellowed "cum-mopper" into his face. He was visibly broken for the rest of the performance.
Alice Raspberry then bumbled on dressed all in black. There was some form of dance which resembled a tin of Dulux Trade paint falling off a ladder.
"Your hive won't accept me," the wasp said in a scene which took place adjacent to a large custard cream. "Then I shall reject them," the bee replied.
In the final act, the wasp is caught in a spiders web along with a green fly (Dexter Fletcher) who represented emotional boundaries. The bee attempted to free the wasp by battling the spider with Israeli combat ballet. After 45 minutes, the bee finally killed the spider with an edged temps levé.
"I am dying, dying, dying, my love," the bee said, swirling around the stage, "and soon I will be dead, dead, dead."
I was unmoved by Alice Rasberry's depiction of a a bee dying, for I had once witnessed a queen dying on a picnic blanket, crushed by my copy of Gardeners World. I felt a great shame in myself for doing this and I could never see Alan Titchmarsh in the same light again.
When the bee finally dropped to the floor, the lights faded and the green fly repeated "life is pain, life is pain," in a cockney accent over and over, until the curtain came to a close.
Overall it was a poor production. However, Dexter Fletcher was a delight, and I would happily see him revise his role as a cockney green fly in a one man play, perhaps set in a lighthouse. I proposed this to him in the bar afterwards, but he appeared indifferent to the suggestion.
Alice Raspberry and Stilton Jonathan's next production is rumored to be about a hippo getting lipsucion in order to fit into the skin of an elk it accidentally ran over. I am dreading the whole thing already.
