THEATRE REVIEW: Buzzing - The King's Arms Theatre, Salford.

“Buzzing” by Debbie Bird is a delicately sensitive coming-of-age comedy featuring mid-life, '80's pop music, and vibrators. This performance was at the King's Arms, as part of the Greater Manchester Fringe Festival.

The stage contained a small table on which a number of vibrators were set up, thrusting towards the sky. They were large, thick, and could be used to cosh somebody over the back of the head with. It was rather intimidating.

Debbie Bird’s character Julie, however, was not intimidating at all. She bustled onto the stage, a ray of sunshine in a rather ordinary little world, and she explained that she was about to hold a sex toy party with her friends – the same friends that she usually tried to impress Tupperware onto. And in this entertaining one-woman show, we got the story of her life.

On the surface, it is a story that is so normal and so common it’s a wonder that it’s on stage. Julie is fifty years old. She married young to a blue-collar man, had two children by him, saw her sex life spiral off into boredom and his desire for porn, and is now divorced. She is rather shy, especially about her age and her body, doesn’t like saying the word “vagina” (an audience member helpfully suggested “lovecastle” instead), and feels that she has missed out on a lot. But she also has reservations about going out and getting it.

What sold the show was the glowing charisma of Bird’s performance. This is an actor that can be plugged into the nearest socket and used as a daylight lamp. Julie was a radiantly sunny personality who could stumble her way through any situation, no matter how embarrassing. Effortlessly, Bird also slipped into other characters that were part of Julie’s story. There was the obligatory montage of bad dates from Tinder – honestly, how do dating apps stay in business? – but the unsavoury suitors were brought to vivid, masculine life. As was Julie’s ex-husband. And there was a terrifying gruff Northern woman who ran some sort of six-week sex-positivity course that Julie attended. I don’t know if such courses exist: I only know I would cosh myself unconscious with a vibrator if I was asked to attend one with that character.

Director Mark Farrelly kept the action moving smoothly around the multiple locations, and seemed particularly fond of putting Bird into some contorted physical pose whenever her insecurities around being seen naked at her age came up. The scene at a 1980's disco night was a hit, with the audience bopping along to the selection of tunes. However, it was mentioned in the play that the night was packed out with people in their 50s. I’m just going to raise that many of today’s 50-somethings actually grew up in the 1990s, and it is techno that is their nostalgia backdrop.

Overall though, it is delightful to see older women reminding the world that they have sex too, and the ending was not what was expected. Go, Julie!

Reviewer - Thalia Terpsichore
on - 11.7.23