Edinburgh Fringe 2019
Moot Moot
CADE & MACASKILL IN ASSOCIATION WITH TAKE ME SOMEWHERE
Genre: Absurd Theatre, Theatre
Venue: Summerhall
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Doppelganger DJs Barry and Barry are desperately seeking connection with the world beyond…
Review
I had no idea what to expect from Moot Moot, I hadn’t even clocked that the play was being performed by an artist who had already won my heart… Rosana Cade one of the two performers in smash hit show Sister, which I utterly enjoyed back in 2015. From glances at the posters around Summerhall, I had assumed the gender of the performers as being two young men dressed up as two older men. And I didn’t recognise either of them. In reality I know both the performers, Rosana and Ivor MacAskill (STUD, Alma Mater) pretty well from sight, as they create their work at the Marlborough Theatre in Brighton, where my office is based. I had no idea it had been these two artists I’d been observing on the posters, it took me quite a while to even realise it was them whilst I was watching the performance and I loved the idea that THIS is what they’d been up to and working on all that time at the Marlborough. I wished I’d been listening at the door. It was very very silly.
I went into the performance with a hangover and when it first started, I thought I might have a panic attack. I didn’t know what was going on and I didn’t want to be there. But after the first five minutes, I began to find myself chuckling. Occasionally at first, then a lot, then I just couldn’t stop laughing. In the same way that white noise helps one get to sleep, Moot Moot ended up completely curing me of my hangover.
The show was simply staged. It consisted of two men in cheap looking grey suits and two swivel office chairs (I’ll never look at those kinds of office chairs in the same way ever again). The show opened with the question “Are we good?” and, as I’ve just said, for the first five minutes I was not sure if the answer to that was positive, but as the performance unfolded and the kaleidoscope of surrealism unravelled, the question fell away. There was no good or bad in the world of Barry and Barry. There was only the desire for their listeners to call in.
It is very difficult to describe this production and I also don’t want to ruin it for you, as part of what was so great about it was that it’s so utterly unexpected. I got the feeling that they had a structure, but that the lines they were coming out with were being improvised, which meant the performance was full of tension and excitement. In a nutshell, it was a mockery of the mind-numbing nonsense that popular culture now enforces upon us. The atmosphere was quite Vic and Bob… But the closest thing I can think of that it resembled is Bangface TV and SHITV at Shangri-la in Glastonbury. If you know either of these are then you’ll understand what I’m getting at, but for those of you who don’t, the best way to describe it is, it’s like daytime TV, but on crack.
Part of the Made in Scotland and British Council Showcases, Moot Moot comes highly recommended, especially if you’re feeling a touch inebriated.
