Writer: Sloan Brettholtz
Director: Bailey Nassetta
Turning up for duty on the final weekend of this year’s Camden Fringe is Officer Scott all the way from New York. The perfect late-night show, Sloan Brettholtz’s cabaret is as silly as it is sweet, as chaotic as it is tightly structured. It’s an unexpected joy.
In the bunker-like performance space, far beneath the King’s Head, audience members are informed that they are, in fact, pupils of the Saint Judi Dench School in New York on a field trip to a police station to hear an educational and cautionary talk by a serving officer on drugs and their effects. As we wait for him, an over-enthusiastic coach looks for new recruits for the basketball team while the principal makes small talk. It’s fun and infectious, but it’s a disguising framework for the main event; the arrival of Officer Scott.
He charges onto to stage with his trousers around his ankles and eager, eventually, to deliver his D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) lecture, albeit with a few tweaks to the official script. But just as the audience settles down for a satirical take on recreational drugs, yet another narrative surfaces; Scott falls in love with substitute teacher Mr Collins. Although this happens early on in the show, it would be a shame to reveal his identity.
The surprises keep on coming: a shroom-fuelled disco, an inspired rom-com montage, a death-defying rescue and even some show tunes. It’s utterly bonkers, but deftly so. With rocket science skills all the performers manage to be in the right spot at the right time with the right prop, all in a tiny space.
As Officer Scott, Brettholtz is very funny, but she ensures that we really root for the lonely man who seems to have no friends or family. It would be easy to turn him into a backward, anti-woke city bumpkin and so it’s refreshing to see such a novel character on stage, someone who is warm and ultimately decent. That’s not to say that the show is soppy or sentimental in any way. On the contrary, it’s decadently queer and a little subversive as demonstrated when a Bisexual Pride flag suddenly appears out of nowhere.
This show is the perfect ending to a successful Camden Fringe but next time the Officer Scott team flies over to London, they definitely gonna need a bigger room.
Runs until 25 August 2024
Camden Fringe runs until 25 August 2024
The Reviews Hub Score
Magical Mayhem
