Only the Spice Girls Were Missing
Our identity is partly formed by our nationality, our local culture, and the social and historical context in which we grew up. In a way, these represent us – even more so in the context of an international festival. And this is something that needs to be used in the theatre.
London College of Music’s production of Miss Brexit stood out among the other festival productions so far this year for its simplicity, its freshness, its vibrancy. It greatly involved wordplay, accents, and enjoyable, as well as cheeky – to the point of being vulgar – lyrical passages. But what started off as a naive farce (in the form of a classic TV game show) turned out to be something so strongly saturated with real problems that one shudders to think of it.
The production took shape on two levels. One level was the portrayal of well-known traits and rhetoric about individual nations. The authors made the most of it and entertained the audience with various innuendos. However, it is important to note that these jokes never once sounded offensive – quite the opposite.
The second (slightly stronger, also due to the fact that the production was performed by a British ensemble) had tendencies based in pointing out British stereotypes. The creators managed to make fun not only of others, but especially of themselves. The UK flags flying everywhere, the questionable cuisine, the (un)traditional tea drinking, the unintelligible accent ... the only thing missing to make it even more British was a Spice Girls-style musical number.
However, I have an urge to express myself not only rationally, but also somewhat emotionally. During my year-long stay in Portugal, the word saudade, which was also mentioned in the performance, rightfully stuck in my mind; it’s a kind of melancholy feeling one gets when pining for something. This feeling is experienced most strongly by emigrants. They are taken out of their familiar surroundings and put into a completely new world that can be confusing, frightening, and certainly does not offer them a warm welcome. Why is it necessary to talk about these issues? Firstly, so that one can better prepare oneself for such situations, and secondly, so that we can learn to be much more empathetic towards strangers. After all, we are all human - we are all just a little different...
