Consecutive Fringe First winners Natasha Roland and Xhloe Rice return to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2024. Last year’s “And Then the Rodeo Burned Down” was an absolute corker so I couldn’t wait to see this piece (one of two productions the team present this year). Natasha Roland and Xhloe Rice are a New York City based, writer/performer company of two who have collaborated for over a decade, creating clownesque absurdist physical theatre.
“What if They Ate the Baby? is a queer theatrical dystopia, probing a relationship of two American housewives (Dottie and Shirley), trapped in a shared liminal space of a suburban household and their own love affair. Post second world war feminism, the stay-at-home mum and the American Dream are all under examination here. It’s not particularly ground-breaking stuff – that is, until you experience the Roland and Rice spin on these themes.
On a black and white checkerboard floor with a table and chair and a lace curtained window the women wear pastel-coloured frocks with stiff petticoats and neat hair. Everything is perfect. But the frocks are smeared with green paint, there’s bright green spaghetti for dinner and the window is wonky. Throbbing grunge music interpolates and accompanies these women’s feverish queer fantasies. Subversion is the name of the game here and picture-perfect lives become sinister, scary, exciting. Roland and Rice are compelling and confident writers. Having created the mundane lives of Dottie and Shirley we then spiral into an absurdist world (in both the existential and Dada-ist sense). Story and dialogue circle, become repeated with lines swapped between the characters. It’s like we are listening into a conversation through a wall and now piecing it together in three dimensions. Meaning is broken and accumulates. Roland and Rice have something to say about the secret lives of women and the skill to have it sing! That the writing is so good makes this work unique amongst productions employing clowning, comedy and physical techniques.
The signature discipline, physicality and play are wildly entertaining. These are highly skilled performers who leave me squealing with delight (internally!) With flair and wit, they deliciously overturn what we “normally” see in the theatre. Form and function come together beautifully.
After the masculine world of rough and tumble clown cowboys in “And Then the Rodeo Burned Down” it is a delight to see the pair explore femininity. But then the hyper masculine cowboy and housewife are both “performing”, right? Percolating themes of surveillance, paranoia, capitalism all orbit a queer centre. The work is political with a light touch. It could be interesting to see if Roland and Rice could sharpen their political darts without losing any of the play.
The company’s new show “A Letter to Lyndon B Johnson or God: whoever Reads this First” is highly anticipated. “What if They Ate the Baby?” has a limited run at the fringe this year. Playing theSpace@Niddry St. Catch it if you can!
Review by Kate Gaul
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