Flounder Review
By Matthew Gray
The word amateur comes from the French amour. Amateurs are those who do the thing for the love, with love.
This is what Adesola Thomas’s flounder. reminds us with its resounding message of community, levity and joy. In this space, amdram isn’t to be dismissed with a snobbish sniff. Rather, it is embraced, not in spite of but because of its wobbly sets and endearing rough edges.
For example, actors in gas masks are already occupying the stage as the audience trickles in. There’s no real purpose or intention behind either this decision or their movements, as they wander freely around the space making small talk with each other, but we’re all on board with this. It is a relaxed, welcoming space, emancipating the gasmasks from their uncanny edge.
Fittingly, the plot concerns the return of a spectral community theatre troupe, reappearing to their lone surviving daughter in the hours leading up to armageddon. These are the Flounders, a self-proclaimed chosen family; a people who dance to solve their problems and who compassionately embrace all outsiders. This compassion outstretched beyond the confines of the stage and into the whole space of the theatre. The audience didn’t feel there to support the performers, but like the performers were there to support us.
As a sign announces in the opening moments: “THIS IS (A) PLAY.” We’re having fun, we’re playing hot potato with the kitchen sink. As a dystopian work, there was of course an emphasis on ideas. Our world is one where people take suppressants to override their physical and mental pain; where starfish have been extinct for forty years. There was interesting thematic exploration of sophisticated ideas such as the function of sport as transnational soft power, as demonstrated in a vignette performed by the deceased troupe. If anything, there was time for more vignettes in a similar vein – but then, I would just happily have taken an extra twenty minutes of Adesola’s warm writing. The sentiments expressed feel like a fist of solidarity raised with tender, gentle care. Meanwhile, well-judged moments of gravity linger on the mind: “I find it hard to survive alongside people I don’t believe in.”
The play’s greatest revelation, however, was its the use of dance and movement. The performers threw themselves into this element with such transcendent abandon, the affect of the body and the music being employed to moving effect. A massive round of applause must go to each member of the ensemble, who brought an infectious vitality and sincere commitment to the text – and all looked totally rad in their mono- and dichromatic fits!
The performance was followed by a dance in the name of community resilience where, basking in the glow of the performance, only positive energies circulated among the congregated amidst dancing, face-painting, dog petting, and free food.
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