Reviews

My Name is Sue (Tour – The North Wall, Oxford)

{Dafydd James] is a very convincing woman. This odd-ball cabaret play tries very hard but is ultimately not quite as convincing. James introduces us to a character who is at turns a screeching, piano-molesting expellee from finishing school or the Valium-serene lonely old woman from down the street.

Sue sings uptempo, cheerful songs about her past, the death of her parents, visions of hellish destruction in Cardiff and the simple joys of regimen in a psychiatric hospital. The strict naiveté of the character and the wacky content of the songs clash perfectly with the music-hall style. The whole of the first forty-five minutes are very funny and very sad.

Before tackling the big problem with the show, namely its finale, it is worth noting that James pulls off a very impressive feat in making a good deal of the laughs very uncomfortable. So convincing is his portrayal of mental illness that the last remaining valve that regulates my sense of decency was straining to constrict the flow of honking laughter. I am forced to wonder if the bizarre behaviour of the mentally ill is really all that funny.

The humour and surrealism is brought to a crashing halt in the last two numbers. Firstly, there is a tender but baffling cover of Radiohead’s ‘No Surprises’, and secondly, there is the hands-in-the-air feelgood hit of the closing number ‘We are all Going to Die’. The problem here is that this sudden lurch towards the profound seems to come out of nowhere. Whilst ambiguity itself is ok, this change of course feels unfinished rather than enigmatic.

Whilst everything in the show’s construction is perfect, the ending muddies the possibility of the audience finding meaning in rest of the piece. If the goal is to introduce this character and tell her story, then we are left without a song that brings the narrative full circle and tells us why she is now sitting here at the piano with us. If the take home message is that life is short and that optimism, even in the face of emotional shellacking, is required then this needs to be echoed more in the rest of the piece.

Despite all this, I am desperate to spend more time in Sue’s company. Next time it might be better if there was more method to her madness.

– Josh Tomalin