Comedy duo Frankie Thompson and Liv Ello are a riot. Body Show sees them smoking tampons, performing a rocky Great British Bake Off sequence, and attending The Last Supper, whilst apocalyptic visions loom ever closer. The show begins with good-natured satire – ‘so, yeah, basically, that’s cryptocurrency!’ – but develops into something meatier, taking aim at a British culture founded on heteronormativity and cisnormativity, and which profits from making us uncomfortable in our own bodies.
Body Show has arrived at the Soho Theatre after rave reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe, and as Ello and Thompson lip-sync and shimmy their way through patchworked narratives of anorexia and body dysmorphia, it is easy to see how its balance of comedy and distress has captured audiences. To say that this show feels like a feverish gallop through Twitter is not to criticise it.
Life-size doll boxes and projected explosions invoke the Barbie and Oppenheimer films, and we hear snippets of interviews by Andrew Tate and episodes from the life of Scottish singer Lena Zavaroni. Thompson and Ello’s writing really captures the spirit of the age, and their spoken word passages are surprising and heartfelt. The slick tech design (Lily Woodford-Lewis) envelops us in video and sound collages, mocking up the internet’s constant onslaught of tragic news stories and insidious brand messaging.
The pair performs generously and energetically, and are at their best when they are onstage together. These moments of connection – Ello and Thompson as kids at a birthday party, or actors in a rehearsal room – are the most touching, but are too few and far between. Body Show certainly does have a heart, though, which emerges as the piece spirals into existential angst. Although they focus on specific examples of alienation and self-image, Ello and Thompson ultimately invite their audience to consider their own bodies, and how they might become sites of love rather than trauma.
Runs until 14 October 2023
