In “Notorious Strumpet And Dangerous Girl”, Jess Love has written a show based around an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting – we, the audience, were very much a part of that meeting which was made ever more authentic by the offer of tea / coffee and biscuits as we walked in to take our seats. Jess introduced herself as ‘Hello I’m Jess and I’m an alcoholic’ to which we had to respond with ‘Hell Jess’ each time she said this.
The concept of having a show based around a real life meeting of alcoholics was intriguing and was definitely something that attracted me to this performance. The set-up seemed authentic and included Jess asking one of the audience members to read out the rules of the session, this allowed Jess to interact with some of other members of the audience before she took to the stage herself seemingly to tell her own story – a disturbing insight into the life of an alcoholic.
We were introduced to Jess’ family through a photograph that was taken some years previously – one in which she was not included and this started to tell the story of how she felt different and excluded from her siblings. The rest of her family are exclusively teachers of some kind and also have a history of performing Christian missionary work both in their native Australia and in some of the developing world in Africa. Jess was the only family member not to be a teacher or missionary worker, instead choosing the profession of circus performer. This gave us a very nice segue into Jess performing her hula-hoop act which I have to say was very impressive, perhaps with the exception where she felt it necessary to strip naked before re-dressing for the finale.
The show continued with similar themes throughout, stories of how she binged on alcohol and drugs interspersed with various circus acts and dramatic re-enactments of her experiences. She recalled one particular time where she went to her hotel room at 3am following a drug and alcohol binge, with her next memory being in the street about a mile away from the hotel, naked and relieving herself next to a bus shelter.
There are some elements of this show that work very well, they hit their mark and give the audience a real insight into the life of someone who possesses the addiction genes, but others are not as successful. The bingo scene went on far too long and whilst it felt like there should be a message for the audience to draw from, it simply didn’t materialise. The amount of scenes where Love bares her naked body were also too frequent for my liking. In many cases she is simply changing clothes or removing clothes for no particular reason – I understand that nakedness can increase the dramatic impact of a scene but not when this is done so often. I thought the final scene where Jess ends up under the shower, clearly recovering from an alcohol and drug fuelled night out, was justified but I cannot find much reason for the other scenes.
Reviewer - John Fish
on - 16/5/19
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