THE FABULIST FOX SISTER (Southwark Playhouse)***

By Aashiq

Link: https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/show/the-fabulist-fox-sister/#schedule

Available until: Further livestreams on Saturday 5^th December at 3.15pm and 7.45pm

Okay, you have got me at a Very Bad Time and I shouldn’t even be writing reviews in my delicate condition (oh, grow up! Of course I’m not pregnant. Only women, non-binary people and trans men can get pregnant and even then, it’s not all of them. And if anyone even thinks about saying obviously I’m not pregnant as I’m clearly having my monthly moment, you can just leave my presence forthwith. Or some such phrasing.) So I can’t promise to be my usual delightful self. (My husband is being unacceptable. We all make mistakes, but he hasn’t so much as bought me a handbag to make up for it. And he keeps asking what he’s done. Am I expected to tell him everything?)

I really love the idea of fabulous fabulist, especially a female one who’s being played by a man. The last thing I want to do is drag it. So I’ll start with the positives. The idea is great. Kate Fox, the woman who accidentally invented séances (by far the best way to invent anything: who wants all that hard work and failure?), is giving her last ever performance, in which she confesses everything about herself, her family and her career.

Or does she? She is, after all, a performer. Performers give the public what they help they want. And what is the truth anyway? The truth can change in a moment. Like one second, my life is over. The next second, I’m not only still alive but quite happy. Yet if I’d told you my life was over a second before, I wouldn’t have been lying. It would have been my honest belief. In a figurative sense. (Of course, that was just an example. My life is still over. Or is it just part of my performance?) We all perform to an extent. We tell jokes. We tease each other. We pretend to be happy when we’re not (well, some people do. I’ve never understood it, myself). We pretend to be scared so we get more hugs. We pretend not to be angry so we don’t cause upset. We pretend we are angry so we get our own way. (I really am angry, though. Just so you know.)

So when does that fun, everyday performance end and the lies begin? And when do professional performances end and the lies begin? (Oh, don’t ask me. How am I meant to know? That’s between you and your conscience.) But I’m not just rambling on because, by a happy coincidence, that is one of the questions asked in the play and it’s an interesting question. What is truth? What are lies? How do we decide what to believe?

The music is brilliant. It’s lovely, it’s a lot of fun and the style is just right for Kate. The sort of thing Strictly Come Dancing would steal for their foxtrots and quicksteps if they had any real interest in authenticity. (So in other words, they won’t steal it, but more fool them.) Michael Conley, who wrote the script with Luke Bateman and also stars as Kate, performs the songs really well.

There’s so much good in this show and there are some great little one-liners, including about Kate’s age (“I was twenty-five… or maybe seventeen.” I literally figuratively do that all the time. I always was terrible at maths.) There’s lots of comedy and some great little stories. But I felt I never really got to know Kate as a person and while that might be part of the point (those people you see up on that stage could be anyone), it is quite difficult to invest in a story when you don’t really get to know the only character who appears in the play.

Also, if you’re a man who’s going to play a woman, for me, there are basically two ways to go. Either you go all-out drag and have fun with it (in a totally individual way, of course), maybe it’s not totally real but you can still make people adore you (that’s what I tell myself, anyway). Or you play it totally straight (no pun intended for once), act it like you’d act any other role, just do it in a make-up, wig and dress (no shoes. That’s the thing that would kill me about this role, Kate can’t have worn shoes!). Michael’s performance seems to sit uncomfortably between drag and straight (and that really can be a very uncomfortable place to sit), it’s like he wasn’t entirely sure which direction he wanted to go in. But that’s just my opinion and I’m going through a very stressful time, so you don’t want to take me too seriously. I get things wrong all the time. (Or so I’m told.)