[2015032] Stuart Bowden: Before Us
Stuart Bowden @ Tuxedo Cat – Perske Pavilion
8:30pm, Mon 16 Feb 2015
Whilst I will enthusiastically state that I’ve loved Stuart Bowden’s work in the past, I’ve always felt a little… well, hesitant in offering a blanket recommendation to people about his work. Don’t get me wrong: I’ve enjoyed his shows very much, but I can’t escape the fact that the melancholy in which they’re marinaded can make them a little… challenging to get through. For me, anyway; his presentations have demanded that I, as an audience member, put some effort in to extract the satisfaction. It’s always been more than rewarding, to be sure, but I found myself trying to perk up prior to this show, anxious that I’d need to be in top form to get the most from it.
Introducing himself as a forest-dwelling creature, Bowden appears in a floppy green sleeping bag (or some such), as comical as ever. Through story and song (ukulele, keyboards, and vocals are looped in a gorgeous live musical score production) we learn that Bowden’s female character is the last of her species left alive; as is his wont, Bowden’s narrative conjures delight from the most morose details and emotions from the deaths of the creature’s parents.
And so we are taken on a lonely little journey, but one filled with unexpected cheer: Bowden’s green creature isn’t grimly upset with her lot, but you feel a real sense of hopelessness – pointlessness – as she demonstrates her day-to-day struggle to us. And it’s here that Bowden’s clowning skills come to the fore: the creature has a consistently odd style of walking when traversing the stage, and her power-walking was even weirder.
Once again, Bowden mines melancholy for much of the performance… but there’s a lightness, a sweetness, to his monologue that is refreshing compared to his previous works. At the end of the show, as the creature inches towards its demise (as forecast throughout), she encourages us to push the Perske’s seating aside so we could all lie with her on the floor, and Bowden leads us in a soft chant that (in retrospect) is hugely inappropriate, but felt oh-so-right at the time: We are all going to die.
I’ll go out on a limb and say that Before Us is Bowden’s most accessible work to date… and I think that’s because of the (relative) lack of whimsy. There’s still a tremendous amount of melancholy, but it’s presented in an almost dissonantly joyful manner; this presentation marks Before Us as a wonderfully unique performance.
(32) Stuart Bowden- Before Us: Melancholic comedic glory with a hugely inappropriate singalong. His most accessible work. #ff2015 #ADLfringe
— Pete Muller (@festivalfreakAU) February 16, 2015