The Greeks had a word for it: 'catharsis' or ritual purgation. Though the context was different, the ritual element persisted. This time, the stage resembled a showroom at the Ideal Home exhibition - if your ideal home happens to contain a sofa covered in straw - with a computer that simulated other parts of the house, each room fitted out with its own particular obscenity. To my surprise, their next performance was at the Royal College of Art. They cheered wildly as the cast took a bow. It even shot over the heads of the audience, whose attitude had slowly altered from indifference to hysteria. Chainsaws appeared, the effigies tried to murder each other and brightly coloured goo spurted everywhere. (I seem to remember a baby getting stabbed at one point, but one or two atrocities may have slipped my mind.) An orgy of violence ensued. He tried to rape the child, the mother turned religious, a mobile cross was dragged in, and to the deafening sound of heavenly music, the daughter was exorcised and simultaneously crucified onstage. To which, time and again, the mother would reply, 'You've got beautiful lips.' Yelling for food, his massive paunch swinging from side to side, the father crammed so much breakfast into his mouth that before long he was eating, belching and spewing at the same time. The father's paunch had a life of its own, the mother's breasts hung around her waist and their child repeated the phrase 'I've got beautiful lips.' in a soppy voice that can only be produced by flaring the nostrils as wide as possible and speaking in a bad Mancunian accent. Three creatures, wearing costumes that extended their limbs, filled the confined space: a frighteningly tall mother, a beer-bellied father and a revolting child, mouthing inanities and moving grotesquely.
Suddenly, to the blare of apocalyptic music, the curtains opened to reveal a set decorated in colours so bright they made your eyes throb.
By the time they appeared it was so late that most of the customers had lapsed into a semi-comatose condition. The night the three Spunkflakes were banned, they had arrived late. This is depressing stuff, but every low at the Tavern has its high. Dressed as one great female star after another, she rams food down her throat until she gags and spits all over the stage - over the audience too, if they are foolish enough to stand within range - and then slides about in it on her bottom. If Baudrillard lived in London and frequented the Vauxhall Tavern, for instance, he could not have escaped Miss Titti la Camp. Whether that involves rejecting sex and the body is another matter. Now that the 80s are over and a period of conspicuous consumption has come to an end, ritual purgation is crucial. Today only disgust is certain taste no longer exists.' That is putting it mildly, and metaphorically. 'From here, it seems, a new energy comes, an inverse energy, a power of repulsion which replaces desire, a vital reaction against that which for us represents society, the body, sex, an energetic disinheritance which is no longer the result of willingness to change all that, but of rejection pure and simple. On the other hand, bad faith, repulsion and disgust have increased in strength.
#CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION GETTING CONSPICUOUS ONSTAGE FREE#
Jean Baudrillard's contribution, 'The Power of Disgust', argued that because old fashioned attraction has declined, we no longer know our own minds, and that as a result taste, desire and free will have also perished. Michael Breslin and Patrick Foley’s shtick might have made for some amusing YouTube videos but as a full-length stage piece This American Wife is so encrusted with smarmy pretentiousness as to render it as masturbatory tedium.In 1986, the French magazine Traverses published an issue called 'Disgust'. The duo resolutely demonstrates a paucity of talent in both fields as they assuredly carry on with the supreme confidence of indulged youth. With a nod to Brecht, they also wrote This American Wife with the assistance of two dramaturgs, Catherine María Rodríguez and Ariel Sibert. If you saw it and didn’t get it, we’re probably not a match. It was provocative, hilarious, and (for better or worse) the most I have ever felt seen onstage. This American Wife wasn’t just an excuse for its creators and stars to recite their favorite lines from RHOBH and RHONY - although, yes, it was that - but also a transfixing, thought-provoking exploration of the relationship between gay male identity and the conspicuous consumption of Bravo’s reality programming.
But that would be discounting the genius of Breslin and Foley, who may have even more of a pathological attachment to Real Housewives (and to theater) than I do. Put on as part of New York Theatre Workshop’s Next Door series, Michael Breslin and Patrick Foley’s This American Wife was a show I feel like I conjured into existence through sheer force of will. BUZZFEED'S BEST PLAYS AND MUSICALS OF 2018!
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