A well structured, engaging show about queer love on the dancefloor.
In London’s Soho, lesbian club Candy Bar was forced out by rising rents. It’s now a “gentlemen’s club” called Vanity.
Where to go if you’re a hot young slug looking for love? The dating apps are a gamified mess, and the clubs that are clinging on are overpriced, grimy, and stressful industrial production lines, from the queue for the door to the queue for the cloakroom to the queue for the bar.
Divakarans character – dressed to dance in an impressive and very sweaty slug mask – navigates all of this over the course of a joyful, compelling hour.
The audience in this intimate tent space are on board from the start, waggling their joysticks and fully committing to the ride.
Our hero is lost and alone for most of the night, though she is approached by a young posh creep who suggests she follow them on Instagram, is supported by a gaggle of coked-up girls in the toilets, and dances the Macarena with everyone in the room.
She orders tequila (hold the salt), vomits lettuce into a corner, and endures pretty blatant anti-slug racism when she’s just trying to have a good time, living her best slug life.
The moments when the slug is dancing – with random audience members, or encased in a plastic sheet after snorting something or other, truly letting herself go – are transcendental. Dancing for dancing’s sake, the outside world ceases to exist, and you forget you’ve lost your friends and can’t afford the Uber home.
Between the tunes, the mask comes off – literally. Divakaran enters the metaphorical smoking area, tries to cadge a smoke off the audience, and wonders why we do all this to ourselves.
These reflective moments, aided by interaction with a shy but willing crowd, help break up the show beautifully. It also humanises it: the slug is an impressive dancer, but Divakaran unmasked is vulnerable, small, and honest.
Back on the dancefloor, it’s impressive how much emotion and personality comes across from a character whose face we cannot see. The tech support is excellent, with loud and clear cues from director Maria Telnikoff, a talented performer in her own right. The voiceless slug noises are also perfectly judged – ever wondered what a slug would talk like? It’s exactly how you imagined.
There is a lot going on here. Even the choice of music across the night, interspersed with by turns bored and desperate MCing from the DJ, is a reminder of how bland and banal modern clubbing can be. How algorithms have infected the dance floor and all genres are mashed up together in a soup as predictable as a Spotify playlist.
This, with the loss of more explicitly alternative and independent spaces, can make for an alienating experience. The alternative, though, is exclusion, and tribalism, and this is the eternal dilemma being danced around here. Where, in late capitalism, can we go in search of true connection?
It’s also just a silly show about a night out, and can be enjoyed on these terms too, even if you’re a slug who prefers the sofa to the dancefloor.
Reviewed on 27th May
The Reviews hub Score
An Engaging Show
