Writer & Director: Hannah Mamalis
Hannah Mamalis’s Stars is a piece that will either hit you in the sweet spot, or miss drastically. For this reviewer, it missed, but as I looked around at a packed Project Arts Centre with people very nearly literally rolling in the aisles I felt I may have been speaking a different language, or not part of a joyous club of which I desperately wanted to be a member.
Having said that, Stars was not without merit – Mamalis is a natural performer, engages well with the audience, and does have some good, amusing ideas. The problem was that this format, a series of barely connected characters and sketches, does not lend itself to developing any of these ideas, so it felt more like a hive of candyfloss made up of swear words and silly voices.
The stage was set up like a talk show, with a spotlight and red velvet curtain. The first performer is not Mamalis, but another, uncredited actor who plays an Italian-American cliché – the reason for this is mentioned, but never really addressed. This sets the piece in motion, for when Mamalis appears the bits come thick and fast, each as whacky as the next, but only connected with fraying twine. The recurring motif is her opening monologue, an ironic riff on the uniqueness of stars (and people), which she does, in various states of distress, four times.
She begins by suggesting that doing this show was a way to bring people together post-Covid, but confesses that it was about bringing herself together; the irony is layered on thickly, but comes to nothing. Why we need her acting out a dog called Uncle Cumbucket or an old woman who can intuit how people – audience members, in an enjoyably ridiculous piece of crowd work – are doomed to be cancelled is never addressed.
Mamalis is a funny writer and performer, but this piece does not show her strengths. The coherence that theatre demands was entirely absent, or painfully forced, while her better moments showed her unshackle these requirements. Perhaps it is a symptom of the Fringe Festival that the definition of “theatre” is stretched to unendurable extremes, but in this case it does not do the work or creator any favours.
Runs until 23rd September 2023.
