The latest show by the British collective Forced Entertainment is a particularly clear example of the company’s explorations of the performance act. That is to say that “forced entertainment” is what the nine actors deliver in sequined go-go dresses and lounge-act attire, awkwardly throwing themselves across the set of plastic palm trees and red carpets. “The Thrill of It All”, as the show is named, is an ironic enterprise on all counts, so wide is the gap between the excitement promised in the title and frequently referred to by the cast, and the deliberately trite spectacle given. The company takes down indiscriminately the familiar codes of performed representations of human experience: there is the declaration of love, the fisticuffs, the emotional breakdown, the holiday gathering around the hearth, the agonized death rattle (also the subject of “Spectacular” in 2008)… The artificiality of these displays is reinforced by the distorting miking of the actors’ voices, while their ubiquity in TV and cinema is emphasized by the cast’s homogenizing get-ups: gents in red dress shirts, black pants, cream jackets and stringy black wigs; ladies in white dresses, red boots and long platinum hair. A reflection on popular entertainment, which still seems to believe that a buxom blonde in a short skirt is worth any intelligent discussion? A send-up of performance codes, as a challenge to the public’s indulgence of these? Forced Entertainment founder Tim Etchells leaves the door open to interpretation while eluding richer discussion of the meaning and effects for society of its performed selves.
“The Thrill of It All”, October 6-9, Wed-Sat, 8:30 pm, Centre Pompidou, Place Georges Pompidou, 4e, Mº Les Halles/Rambuteau, 10/14 euros, tel: 01.44.78.12.33 / Festival d’Automne, tel: 01.53.45.17.17.
Photo Credit: Hugo Glendinnin
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