A rectangular booth stands centre stage. Alone and out of place, it looks as if it has just arrived there. Its size is similar to that of an old police call box and a luminescent blue sheen does seem to emanate from within. But there the similarities stop for this is not the time-travelling, world-hopping ship of science fiction but rather a sound booth inhabited by a recording artist and the setting for multidisciplinary theatre company Action Hero’s brand-new show The Talent. Well, maybe there is one more similarity. This blue box is certainly bigger on the inside.
Over the next hour we are treated to a montage of snapshots of the life of a recording artist. Gemma Paintin plays “The Talent”, a consummately professional artist utilising her work as an outlet as well as a distraction. Throughout the show she is joined by the disembodied voices of her amicable producers who offer encouragement as well as some laughably abstract direction. Aspects of their personal lives occasionally spill through the speakers as the team work towards recording take after take of various projects and commissions. And they are many. From detergent adverts to sci-fi dramas, SUV commercials to video game voiceovers, the Talent rattles through a host of voices, characters, accents and soundscapes at blinding speed. The premise is fertile ground for comedy and the production deftly harvests ripe laughs as the spectacle unfolds.
But that is not to say the show is without substance. The booth, at times a seemingly safe haven from which the outside world can be silenced or at least muffled, is not impenetrable and slowly the exterior begins to seep in. As outside events gain more clarity we begin to place all that we have seen into its context. The sounds made and the content formed for products sold and narratives pushed begin to take on new meaning. The whole premise shifts and we begin to wish we were able to retract our earlier amusement in it all. Sentiments are manufactured and experiences are commercialised all from this small, enclosed, sterile cell. No one is safe from scrutiny and questions are even raised of the Talent’s own complicity in some undeniably nefarious sequences (she rolls through the automated replies of a phone scam in one skit). At times it makes for an uncomfortable but necessary watch. At others, it is deeply hopeful. Throughout, it remains one you cannot avert your eyes from or shut your ears to, never afraid to lift, inspire, baffle and break its audience over the hour we are permitted to eavesdrop upon.
Paintin’s performance is nothing short of incredible. She exhibits a complete mastery of her vocal capacity and an ability to flick and shift between dialects and mediums in an instant. She allows an understated comedy to permeate the performance that only adds to the pathos as the absurdism of the producers’ requests generates the night’s heavy laughs. This is a unique performance, at home in multiple mediums – confident in its stagecraft, it remains as affable yet circumspect as a favourite podcast that also happens to run ads, a commercial undercurrent is inescapable.
For a one-person play in which the action is confined within a solitary booth, the production is imbued with a sporadic dynamism. The pace never falters and bold physical sequences are eked out to their limit by the team’s direction (Deborah Pearson, Gemma Paintin and James Stenhouse all contributing to the creation and direction of the piece). Alex Fernandes’ lighting design arcs, swipes and flickers, punctuating the pitch shifts and guiding the narrative from project to project. Lengthy shadows loom at the edge of the bright glass box, seeming to grow and wither in size as it stands slightly off-kilter in the centre of the Attenborough Centre’s stage, as the Talent assures she is fine and just grateful to have work to be getting on with.
Never has theatre felt more like an individual experience but one that happens to be shared by many in the same space. It was akin to watching a play piped through noise-cancelling headphones accompanied by a laugh track. A unique and experiential hour, unnerving and interrogative it remained an immensely enjoyable watch throughout. Helmed by masterful direction, bolstered by erudite design and delivered with an unwavering performance this collage of the absurd and the manipulative packs some hard-hitting questions of capitalism, contemporary media and our role as its consumers amidst its melange of skits and vocal skirmishes so pleasing to the ear.
It was impossible not to be taken in. But perhaps, that is the danger.
The Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, Tuesday 14 March 2023
