Theatre: Blondes

Date: August 31st, 2009 Author: Andrew Doyle
Category(s): Theatre: Blondes
Comments: 0

Theatre
*
Denise Van Outen’s Blondes
Udderbelly’s Pasture

This show is a mess.  Denise Van Outen has a strong singing voice, and her appearances on The Big Breakfast all those years ago proved beyond doubt that she could raise a smile.  But this mishmash of songs and banter is a vacuous and mind-numbing way to spend an hour.

Part of the problem is that Van Outen is simply not an effective joke-teller.  There are a few humorous lines lurking amongst the mire of inane wittering, but from her lips they invariably fall flat.  The script has been cobbled together by Jackie Clune, a stand-up comic who, in contrast, has excellent comic timing.  With Van Outen trying to deliver Clune’s jokes, the effect is rather like hearing a poem by Yeats being read aloud by a man with a mangled tongue.

Jackie Clune is unquestionably a brilliant stand-up, so the laziness of the writing in Blondes is all the more vexing.  There are also some jokes at the expense of lesbianism, Van Outen at one point miming a vomiting action when she describes lesbian sex.  In the context of the humour in this show, which is about as anodyne as it gets, it seems unnecessary to single out gay women as objects of ridicule.  It seems particularly rich given that Jackie Clune was herself a self-proclaimed “radical feminist lesbian” for a period of twelve years, until she “came out” as straight in 2002.

Of course, Clune’s sexuality is her own business, and no one has the right to pass judgement.  But what is slightly galling is that Clune subsequently sold her story to the Daily Mail; the result being an odious, overtly homophobic article that played directly into the hands of those right-wing bigots who believe that same-sex orientation is a choice.  I presume this was for financial gain, but when you consider that recent research has demonstrated that homophobia is on the rise is schools, and that gay teenagers are six times more likely to commit suicide that their straight peers, is it really worth contributing to this culture of hate?  Still, I hope she enjoyed the money.

Gay-bashing aside, the show has some other cringeworthy low-points.  There’s the karaoke-style projection of lyrics onto a screen, with Van Outen urging a reluctant audience to sing along.  There’s the scripted audience participation, which sees Van Outen slagging off her audience members in a witless and contrived manner.  Most aggravating of all is Van Outen’s feigned corpsing whenever she says something that she deems particularly amusing.  At least someone’s laughing.

AD