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Curated by the ever-impressive Word Of Warning, Domestic consists of seven offbeat shows staged in a 1970s tower block in Hulme. These shows may well work perfectly in small theatres, but in bringing them out of the theatre and into the community they are likely to take on a heightened significance. To enjoy Shower Scenes, a response to Hitchcock's Psycho, you will have to go into the bathroom, but if that sounds a step too far there's Jo Bannon's perceptive Exposure and J Fergus Evans's My Heart Is Hitchhiking Down Peachtree Street, a real peach of a show.
Lyn Gardner https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/nov/02/this-weeks-theatre The pain of exile versus the relief of having got away – both emotions run through J Fergus Evans' solo show, which tells the story of the performer's own upbringing in the American deep south.
Though it's full of handy hints about the dangers of living in Georgia (you can only outrun an alligator if you move in zigzags; it's best to check under the toilet seat in case a spider is lurking there), Evans suggests that it's not just the deadly copperhead snake or black bear that you should fear in these parts, particularly if you happen to be gay. Until 1998, under laws against sodomy, homosexuality was illegal in Georgia; gay people faced tougher penalties than necrophiliacs. In common with all but nine US states, same-sex marriages still remains unrecognised. Evans, laidback and engaging, is like a travelling troubador, performing to small audiences (six when I saw the show) and transforming broom cupboards, boiler rooms and office spaces into tiny pieces of Georgia, complete with neon bar signs, hokey memorabilia and the twang of folksy music. You can taste the tang of bourbon on your lips and experience the sweet stickiness of peach juice on your chin as you get glimpses of homecoming queens and mean girls, misdirected kisses and drag artists, pipe bombs and hurricanes. The show is suffused with both pain and nostalgia, but also something tougher and more resilient. And it creates a world so artfully that you leave the theatre swearing you've travelled to Georgia and back. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/mar/26/heart-hitchhiking-down-peachtree-street “Fergus Evans packs a lot into just ten minutes extracted from his full-length show My Heart is Hitchhiking Down Peachtree Street. The three of us joining him in the campervan write stickers with our names and the place we think of as home, and Evans engages us all in a brief but gently perceptive conversation about how we feel about these places, whether they are where we now live or not. This is interwoven with his own softly-spoken but intensely lyrical memories of Peachtree Street in Atlanta, Georgia, its heat and haze, tarmac and transvestites, and his blunt if factually-questionable advice about living there (dealing with bears, snakes and alligators), which he carefully checks we’ve listened to and can recall. Finally, he gives us each a peach to take away. It’s rich and unhurried, and although in the full show I’m sure the links between the different registers would feel less abrupt, even in this shortened form its questions about home, memories and distance pack an emotional punch, wrapped, like the peaches, in a softly padded box.”
http://totaltheatrereview.com/reviews/campsite |
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