After a successful run at last year’s Edinburgh Festival where the question was posed by an impressed reviewer: “How does a middle aged white man with a guitar and a show about being British manage to make this the opposite of how crap it sounds?” I was intrigued to make amends for missing it as it finally arrived at London’s Battersea Arts Centre some 8 months' on.
This is the second in a trilogy exploring the theme of identity, and as in the first acclaimed piece ‘Confirmation’ (described as “a one-man fake news tinged investigation”) ‘Status’ features writer and performer Chris Thorpe telling a globe-spanning story about ‘Chris’. Chris (who we don’t think is technically Thorpe himeslf but perhaps a version of him) is a middle-aged man with a blonde mop and - without going into this here - 2 passports; who surveys the nation from the roof of a Stockwell flat the morning after a ‘monumental’ event and decides to get the hell out. We are told categorically this is NOT a Brexit play - although the referendum result of 2016 seems very clearly the familiarly topical catalyst for Chris’s departure (and we must all know somebody - if not ourselves - who similarly spluttered “that’s it I’m leaving!” over our morning coffee on that June morning).
It is always a good idea to reign your audience in as quickly as possible especially when required to carry a show single-handedly for 80 minutes. Thorpe does this - first with a visually displayed provocative quote from our current Prime Minister stating “If you believe you are a citizen of the world then you are a citizen of nowhere” followed up with a high octane prologue telling us of a visit to ‘the freakishly flat’ Banat in Serbia 3 years after its bloody conflict, and a drunken encounter with police brutality in the local rock-bar-centre-of-the-universe where Thorpe is somehow magically saved from a “really unpleasant experience” because of several hundred years of Empire - aka “you can’t do that to me - I’m British!"!
Back to (the other) Chris and we are told stories of his various - often surreal- encounters around the world following his exodus from the UK. “ Better a citizen of nowhere than of a country that’s just shot itself”. His visit to Monument Valley and a Navajo Indian named (probably for the benefit of the daily glut of western tourists) Joe, whose beliefs do not include parcelling the world up into borders; a ‘cayote’ in the Nevada desert who was apparently an East German refugeee in the 1980s - hanging on to a version of her identity to survive in the west; to a swanky but extremely seedy Singapore nightclub full of financial douchebags for whom indentity is a free for all (and who everyone does over for money) where Chris fails to explain “I’m not like them!”; and finally to a ‘cardboard cut-out’ in an airport: her final port of call on Earth having fled her post-colonial broken country and appalling drowning in an overcrowded refugee boat.
As off-the-wall as this may seem, there is great poignancy and care in Thorpe’s words of which, by the way, there are many. His highly original take on a universal theme and live-wire delivery makes it easy to miss bits - at times even misunderstand what on earth he is on about. This is however, is a piece that is paced with impressive precision, with live music and an atmospheric video backdrop perfectly integrated into the performance, thanks to the contributions of director Rachel Chavkin and Designer Andrzej Goulding. I also suspect it would benefit from a second viewing.
The 80 minutes fly by and the man with the guitar on stage on his own has lived up to expectations and succeeded in holding the audinece in the palm of his hands. Quite ironic that in a supposed ‘relaxed’ performance where the audience can come and go as they please, the only audible movement is the microphone, persistently and who knows, even symbolically, removing itself from its dodgy stand.
Reviewer - Georgina Elliott
on - 23/4/19
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