Brat summer. Espresso summer. Pink pony girl summer. We're all having a good time, right? This is the central question haunting ‘Birthday Fish,' the physical theatre-surrealist-comedy show by Erin Hughes and Stephanie Burrell (Birthday Fish Theatre).
The show begins with Hughes and Burrell seated around a gloomy pink tablescape in the witching afterhours of a house party that began thirteen hours before. As the two relive the night's experiences, audiences watch them struggle with belonging, finding success as young artists, and the neverending social pressures and expense (economic, physical, mental) of London life - as well as how to make it to the next dinner party across the city.
Hughes and Burrell are Northern performers and writers who met during their training at the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. In ‘Birthday Fish,' they have struck surrealist gold, delicately balancing every-day, existential horror with slapstick, absurd physical comedy. Burrell delivers a moving monologue recounting seeing a fish ‘left for dead on the tarmac' next to the Victoria Park pond, ‘so close to [what] it needed to survive… [to] thrive.' It's hard not to miss this metaphor for so many young artists in London - their survival or thriving so close yet often not in their own hands. Hughes also shines in a twitchy movement solo, during which she offhandedly describes an encounter following a mystical fox who leads her to a severed foot.
Dance and physical performance are interwoven throughout scenes - the pair neatly execute a robotic post-party cleanup duet, the precision of which contrasts starkly with the comedically-delivered, forced affability of the binge-drinking scene which follows. In another scene, Hughes and Burrell shift into a slow-moving, parodic yoga-like meditation, over which a soothing voice asks them (perhaps the audience as well) to stretch their ‘minds','bodies' and ‘paychecks' to survive in London.
Sound design by Erin Hughes sampling Tommy Wallwork's label and Manchester producer Henzo creates a fuzzy, living room atmosphere featuring jazz, techno and snippets of conversation. Jacob Elliott Roberts' costume design enhances the sense of nostalgia by referencing Y2K fashion in ‘#girlhood pink' shades. The show's influences - Kafka, Brecht, responses to neoliberalism - are clear in Hughes and Burrell's staging of their own experiences fitting in and finding artistic success in super-saturated London. The horror at the centre of the show is the suggestion that we too are‘fish out of water' who could be ‘left for dead' if we fail to keep up.
It's fitting that this work was selected for a five-day run at the Edinburgh Fringe, where stars are made or crushed by the pressures artists face during the festival season. Dance Art Journal has already listed Birthday Fish as a ‘show to watch' at this year's Fringe.
‘Birthday Fish' is a fever dream of relatable experiences which reads like an episode of a television series - this generation's depressed and broke ‘Sex and the City.'
‘Birthday Fish' will run from 20-24th August at Greenside Venues at the Fringe. Tickets: here.
Review: ELT