Writers: Dylan Aiello and Scarlett Stitt
Stage tributes to George Michael might be tempted to go down the jukebox musical route, with or without a book based on the singer’s life. Much less predictable is the route taken by performing duo Dylan Aiello and Scarlett Stitt: a freewheeling, abstract clowning interpretation of one of the lowest periods in Michael’s life.
On Michael’s Wikipedia page, which splits apart his professional life from his personal, the period upon which Aiello and Stitt concentrate is described as “a long period of seclusion”. That euphemistic description covers Michael’s intense grief at the loss of his partner, Anselmo Feleppa, to an HIV-related brain haemorrhage.
We first meet Aiello’s version of Michael in the throes of depression, enshrouded in a black, hooded dressing gown. Stitt takes on numerous forms around him, from Anselmo’s ghost – part poltergeist, part memory, part helpful sprite knocking a suicidal Michael’s sleeping pills out of his hand – to his manager and his mother. In these latter two roles, the burden of expectation they place upon him is physically manifest, as Stitt sits atop Aiello’s back, weighing her partner down.
Occasionally, Stitt also encourages memories of happier times – to Wham!’s Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go video, with its “Choose Life” T-shirts that contrast so vividly with a character consumed by grief. Such moments are when the piece’s sound design, otherwise an abstract collage of sound clips, moody effects and musical excerpts, briefly solidifies into something that more resembles a traditional tribute.
But Kissing a Fool is stronger whenever it moves away from that, and so it is a relief that such moments never outstay their welcome. Instead, the emphasis on contemporary dance and cirque-style clowning allows us to focus much more on Michael’s turmoil as he attempts to write a new song while still consumed by the black gown of depression.
The pair’s sole prop is a heavy wooden table, which in succession becomes a bed, a kitchen, a bathtub, a car or a piano. Most effectively, upended and balanced on one corner, it becomes the door through which Stitt, as former Wham! backing singer Shirlie Kemp pleads with Michael to stay present. It’s the piece’s most straightforward, most nakedly emotional moment, and one that helps infuse the dancers’ more abstract sequences with a similar sense of intensity.
The piece reaches a culmination with the end of that period of seclusion”. The show feels duty bound to end with the titular Kissing a Fool, written some years earlier, but the true emotional climax comes with Michael’s new song, based on his relationship with Feleppa. Angel to Child rings out with the reveal that its lyrics and musical motifs have been dispersed throughout Aiello and Stitt’s performance.
And while Michael may no longer be with us, the sight of him donning another hooded dressing gown – his boyfriend’s coloured one, rather than the black robe signifying his depression – brings with it a deep level of cathartic relief that the man survived this darkest of periods.
And that is the measure of this unorthodox take on a musician’s biography. By focussing on a short period of George Michael’s life, Kissing a Fool offers a deeper insight into the artist’s psyche than any straightforward jukebox musical ever could.
Continues until 31 July 2023 and then at Edinburgh Fringe
