Showmanism is a virtuoso solo performance by Dickie Beau with contributions from a number of others, among them Ian McKellen, Fiona Shaw, director Peter Sellars, voice coach Patsy Rosenburg, Greek actress Mimi Denissi, impressionist Steve Nallon and critic Rupert Christiansen. None of those others actually appear, and Dickie Beau doesn’t say a word but is continually engaging through its entire 95 minutes lip-synching to their recorded voices in a wide-ranging exploration of the idea of theatre channelled through his eloquently communicative physicality.
A monochrome set by Justin Nardella, eerily lit by Marty Langthorne, is open into the wing space and, with its hanging video screens and glinting metal, suggests the magical world of technology. A costume skip, a bath with an orange tree in it, a skull and a spade hint at what may be to come. A reel-to-reel recorder symbolically sits downstage centre, but look up as the audience gather and above you can see a white-dungareed figure clambering across the grid overhead. Will he climb down that long ladder to start the performance? Beau has grabbed your attention and holds it.
Even before the birth of spoken language and drama, there is mime with a classic cliché of confronting an invisible barrier before he smashes that glass wall.
He then takes us back to the origins of theatre, the huge space of Epidaurus, to the days when Pericles paid workers a day’s wages so they could take time off to spend the whole day at the theatre, where thousands looked down at the figure of the actor but even those in the furthest seats could hear him, the arc of the theatre like a giant ear.
Language came late in human development, but the sound we make defines us, it makes us a per-son.
There are huge crowds for the passion play at Oberammergau too, some in the audience drifting in and out even with Christ on the cross, but the audience are a vital part of performance, and the exploration of the actor-audience relationship becomes almost metaphysical.
The contributing recorded voices share ideas and bring knowledge, but there is personal anecdote too. McKellen tells how, playing Prospero, he was suddenly seized by the knowledge he was going to dry and didn’t just not know the lines but had no idea where in the play he was.
There is a reminder of theatre tradition: Edmund Kean’s Richard III sword, passed down by lead actors to a succession of leading actors (until one of them famously kept it).
Cilla Black, even Iron Lady Thatcher are among those who get a look in, thanks to impressionist Nallon, a performer who in an earlier age might have been burned as a witch for having all those voices.
Stripped to his underpants, Beau does not flaunt nudity; it is rather a symbol of his serious openness, and though there is some diva-like swishing and divine footwork, it gives a leavening of lightness.
What sometimes seems arbitrary without any obvious purpose is carefully constructed by Beau and Jan Willem van den Bosch, his director and co-devisor. Running through Showmanism, there is a clear love of theatre. If, as seems likely, you share it, this should be a real treat.
Oh, and by the way, Beau does get to speak—though on a recording that he then lip-synchs to!