Review: Kinder, The Lantern Theatre- Brighton Fringe
- thespianmeg
- May 14
- 3 min read
(Photo Credit: Megan O'Neill)
Drag artist, Goody Prostate, has arrived and they are ready to slay the house down as the headliner for a local ‘reading hour’. They are ready for their usual adult crowd…only to discover that they will be performing for children and their parents. Great! Perfect!! One hour is definitely enough time to pull together a brand new, child-friendly act, with new costumes and choreography and songs and definitely not spiral or anything.
Created by Ryan Stewart, this show made its highly successful debut at Melbourne Fringe in twenty twenty four, being selected as two of the judge’s picks after just three performances. It then went on to perform at Adelaide Fringe the following year, where it was shortlisted for the ‘Take a chance on Adelaide’ award, and was then re-developed in advance of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Having left Brighton, the show is currently in Dublin, as part of its international tour, and will be stopping in Prague and Edinburgh.
The set, with its cardboard boxes and covered up mirror, gives absolutely nothing away. Its deconstructed state later feels very reminiscent of the state of the opera house from ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ or like a metaphor for the phrase ‘let’s unpack this’. Ghosts feel a bit more apt considering the journey into memory and history we are about to go on.
Don’t be fooled by the simplicity of the plot concept, the story goes significantly deeper than expected. Stewart is very good at giving us the main house tour before showing us the basement.
Kicking things off with a drag performance, and the clowning chaos that ensues with Goody Prostate’s discovery that they have accidentally booked a gig for a children’s hour, is utterly hilarious.
The drag style is classic drag lip-syncing and dancing to a song, a mini show within the main show. As someone who cut her teeth on queer shows watching this style of drag, it filled me with a great sense of nostalgia for the first discovery of how beautiful and artistic drag performances can be.
The clowning works to enhance this element of creative discovery further, outside of the mini-act, by, as any strong clowning performance does, further affirming the safety of the space that Stewart has invited us into and relieving any tension from the outside world by giving us a good laugh. What’s particularly stand-out is how the clowning and drag styles are used to ease us into the more serious sides of the subject matter.
Children are the world’s sponges, they pick up more than we like to think they do. History tells us that it’s never just the one book that gets burned, an adult throws one into the pyre, a child throws one into the pyre and another one goes into hiding. Remind you of anything? A stark change of costume and clowning with a more unsettling smile. Stewart makes the haunting statement that history repeats itself, so banning books and certain types of media tends to mark a harrowing beginning, especially if children follow their parents and/or wider society.
Stewart's work also asks an important question: why have children if you can’t love and accept them for who they are? Trans rights are human rights, gender is fluid, there are millions of gender combinations and that who you are is not always something you choose, it can be something you're born with. You should be allowed to be who you are, embraced and loved for it. Childhood informs the kind of adults we become, it's worth keeping this in mind when we consider what we pass on to children.
On that note, Stewart's idea that maybe we are all children, is something I think I can get on board with. We have the capacity to be sponges, but as adults we can also be bricks. So maybe it’s time to unlock the element of our child selves that is designed to learn and grow. If anything, this show is a reminder that we are all each other’s kin, it's not just biological. So if we take care of each other, we can make the world a brighter and safer place.
Stewart’s writing is strong and well paced, the show carefully balanced and grounded, making it pure joy and heartbreak in equal measure. Their talents as a drag artist and as a clown are impeccably integrated to create a memorable and impactful experience.
Absolutely outstanding!
***** Five Stars
Age rating: Sixteen plus
Content notes: Discussions about the Holocaust, Discussions about queerphobia/transphobia/homophobia, mentions of eugenics, strong language, sexual references.
For more information and tickets…
For the Dublin run: https://gaytheatre.ticketsolve.com/share/873685084
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