This musical satire of reality TV is about a show in the Pop Idol mould, but for female contestants vying for a charitable cause of their choice rather than a singing contract. It has mashed-up shades of Miss World – except this is a feminist version of that contest, sending up and railing against women’s place in TV culture and in life.
The competition is down to five finalists – including Mia, who has bumped her head just before going on air. Her concussed state leads her to speak and sing in unfiltered ways about the hypocrisies of reality TV and its cynical gender politics. When she performs her first, punkish protest to a live studio audience with the song Fuck This Show, her popularity rockets and producers begins using this to their advantage.
Tobia Rossi and Oliver Lidert’s script, based on an original concept by Ilaria Fioravanti, is a caffeinated monologue in which Daisy Steere plays every character, including the Italian producer and “backstage fascist” Maria, as well as every finalist. Directed by Ruthie Stephens, contestants speak to the off-stage voice of Big Sis (Natalie Casey), and there is occasional Gogglebox-style commentary from characters on small screens on the stage.
The aim is clearly to lay bare the biases and skulduggery of such shows, which manipulate contestants and pin women to stereotypical ideals. And the script is lively but the satire is too self-evident. Steere proficiently switches between several accents, which helps distinguish the characters, but there is reductive comedy in a contestant’s Liverpudlian straight-talking, a God-fearing Irish woman (“In der name of der fader …”), a foxhunting Sloane, and so on.
These characters are too broad, while the play’s polemic is as unfiltered as Mia’s concussed outrage, and its earnestness sits oddly against the satire. There are mentions of chemical dumping, the wage gap, Jeffrey Epstein, JK Rowling, corporate greed, toxic masculinity and the patriarchy, but critiques are fleeting and unfocused. The songs (with music by Simone Manfredini) deliver generic messages but have little bite and are unmemorable.
The end twist is so contrived it seems incoherent, but the production does capture the tinny tone and pace of a reality TV competition, and Steere gives a thoroughly jaunty performance. It is a shame that the show rails against so many social ills but addresses none of them sharply enough.
Article by:Source: Arifa Akbar
