![]() The directors (Daniel Nettheim, Helena Brooks and Jennifer Leacey) and screenwriters (Sarah Lambert, Kim Wilson, Kirsty Fisher and Magda Wozniak) deftly balance comedy and drama, creating a subtle and strange quirkiness. Marv is the show’s goofiest and most lighthearted character, summing up Ed’s encounters as “a lonely old lady who you kissed better, a rapey bad guy, and a running girl who kicked you in the nuts”. Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning By the fourth episode (the first four form the extent of this review) Ed is building confidence and embracing his hero-ish status, telling a priest: “That’s why I’m here – I help people.” Things get darker at the second address, home of an abusive husband at the third, Ed follows a young runner who mistakes him for a stalker. Before long Ed is delivering her flowers and the pair are partaking in some intergenerational smooching – the domain of Harold and Maude, via some Amélie-esque small acts of kindness. At the first resides an elderly lady who mistakes him for somebody from her past called Jimmy. If Ed’s head is a little foggy, at least he knows where to go: those mysterious addresses. When Ed asks his mother about the meaning of an obscure-sounding quote, mum’s response tells us she’s been here before: “What it means is my son’s up to his usual nonsensical bullshit.” Ed is the kind of character sometimes described as an “antihero”, charmingly brought to life by McKenna with an aloof, distractible, sleepy-eyed energy his performance has the vibes of a young Ben Mendelsohn, from the era of The Year My Voice Broke and The Big Steal. Gob Squad is funded by: Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe.There are inferences that the protagonist might be a little non compos mentis, hallucinatory point-of-view shots occasionally displaying things that aren’t there. Supported by: Fonds Darstellende Kuenste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. World premiere co-commissioned and co-produced by: HAU Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin), La Jolla Playhouse Without Walls Series (San Diego)Ĭo-production: Mousonturm (Frankfurt), Schlachthaus Theater Bern, International Summerfestival Kampnagel (Hamburg) June 20th 2020 HAU Hebbel am Ufer Berlin and La Jolla PlayhouseĪ production by Gob Squad. Lighting Design and Technical Management: Sebastian Bark, Jeff McGrory and Catalina Fernandez Sean Patten, Sharon Smith, Berit Stumpf, Sarah Thom, Bastian Trost, Simon Will, Tatiana Saphir and Laura Tonke Show Me A Good Time is multi-hour live performance split into several episodes, for online viewers as well as a theatre audience. With the benefit of hindsight and the optimism of the future, Gob Squad warp time, and completely rethink the clock. Their mission reveals an alien world of habits, signs and symbols that once seemed to make sense but now only evoke a time already passed. In Show Me A Good Time Gob Squad send out time-travelling, shape-shifting explorers into a strangely unfamiliar reality, to find out how to go on and where, amongst the dust and the dirt, a good time might be found again. Sometimes they use cameras to bring the urban jungle, with all its danger, beauty and messiness, into the comfort of a theatre. Sometimes they perform on the streets or in other public non-theatre locations. What is to be done? Where are the good times in the new normal? On a stage?On the streets? At home on the sofa?įor over 25 years, Gob Squad have been blurring the boundaries of art, theatre and real life. The pause button has been pressed on the society of acceleration in which technology, fashion, social habits, financial markets and fake news all seem to be developing at an ever faster rate. The world is changing fast, and there is no going back to the way things were. Due to circumstances beyond its control, ‘the present’ is self-isolating and stuck in a perpetual selfie, staring at themselves on a filtered screen, listening to a mindfulness app on continuous repeat. All we have left is now. The past has passed and the future looks more uncertain than ever.
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