Edward Gant is the hero of Anthony Neilson’s homage to the garish and cruel spectacle of the nineteenth-century freak-show: ‘prodigy, soldier, traveller, poet – but always and ever a showman’, or so his immodest self-advertisement proclaims. He’s a moustachioed confidence-man of blisteringly persuasive aspect, whose troupe of thespian accomplices come complete with an implausible array of shady pasts, and his tawdry sideshow is a parade of deformities, not of the body, but of the heart and the mind.
Steve Marmion’s revival revels in the tinselled excesses and hyperboles of Gant’s oversize toy-theatre, gorgeously realised and equipped with all manner of old-fashioned stage trickery by designer Tom Scutt. Here the company strut, fret and clown with gruesome and outrageous aplomb. Simon Kunz as Gant oozes slightly ghastly geniality, while Paul Barnhill gives his dissenter-within-the-ranks a workmanlike integrity that survives cross-dressing and slapstick. Sam Cox’s veteran sergeant undergoes much physical indignity with stoical absurdity, and Emma Handy shines as a succession of luckless heroines, mercilessly subverting a facade of idealised womanhood with a sharp eye for physical foolishness.
Despite Gant’s assurances that the tall-tales of his freak-show will offer revelations of the human heart, they invariably descend into crowd-pleasing exhibitions of grossness (featuring much explosive ejaculation of bodily fluids). Even when the players rebel and demand that the showman live up to his publicity, the drama doesn’t manage to resist the allure of cheap gags over some admittedly pretty flimsy character development. The play-without-the-play has none of the vigour and exuberance of Neilson’s travesty Victoriana, and after a little limp debate the cast retreats disconsolately (if in commendably good order) back to the props desk for more goo.
This isn’t to say that the show isn’t great fun (though it’s probably best to avoid the front rows if you’re squeamish). It’s just that Neilson, like Gant, seems to promise more than he delivers in this entertaining, but insubstantial, exhibition of in-yer-face whimsy.
