In Pursuet at the King’s Head Theatre, London review: ‘Perkily savage’
Eleanor Higgins channels the awkward charm of muse Sue Perkins in this stinging exploration of a millennial in crisis
Words: Jamie Tabberer; picture: provided
“Don’t look at me like that! We’ve all done it!”
So laments the main character of In Pursuet, a striking one-person dramedy about a flailing 30-something’s initially cutesy but eventually out of control obsession with TV presenter Sue Perkins. Truer words never spoken – who hasn’t, after all, nursed an unhealthy affection for a public figure or five? (This writer’s fascination with the Spice Girls, for one, resulted in an entire journalism career, and multiple professional encounters with… well, four of them. Don’t make me say it.)
In Pursuet, as such, is more relatable than first signposted. We were genuinely expecting, given the preposterous premise, the on-the-nose name (stylised as In PurSUEt) and delightfully silly promo imagery, a sweet-natured farce. But despite being laugh out loud funny in places (‘Stonewall’ really does sound like the name of a rock band, doesn’t it?), and despite conjuring some of the offbeat magic of the comic who inspired it, the play’s value is in its unexpected seriousness.
We meet Higgins’ character lying on the floor missing a shoe. Cruelly outlining her isolation, she’s known only as ‘Woman’; this, despite the extreme intimacy we as an audience share with her, in our forced role as the therapist she’s talking to. Through her incessant denials, we quickly surmise she has a drinking problem, and Higgins spends much of the following 60 minutes jumping from one level of performed inebriation to another.
What a challenge to set oneself. ‘Drunk’ is surely one of the hardest things to act, not least a brand of drunkenness that’s problematic and destructive. Higgins thus races through a spectrum of human behaviour that amounts to acting with a capital ‘A’. Affable one minute, aggressive the next; from sickness to paranoia to operatic degradation. It’s all uncomfortably… is entertaining the right word? Certainly, during her more arch moments, Woman puts Attitude in mind of the perversely entertaining antics of Eddie and Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous. (Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley’s acting on that show is criminally underrated.)
We detected a fluffed line or two, and there are some hackneyed observations about the state of the world that need fine-tuning. (But brace yourself for some of our own…) Nevertheless, there’s a rawness to the performance that demands attention, and in our very online age of human disconnection, with lockdown still a recent memory, In Pursuet’s themes of loneliness hit hard.
3.5/5
In PurSUEt is on at 3.50pm at Underbelly at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.