We’ve all felt the urge to impose order on the mess of our lives, whether that mess is literal or emotional. It’s both in Jessica Barton’s new clown show, which won her the best newcomer gong at Melbourne’s comedy festival. Dirty Work finds Barton in bonneted and buttoned-down guise as Mary Floppins, here to tutor us in tidiness – and sweep away her own demons to boot. If her near-namesake could put a room to rights with just a snap of her fingers and a catchy song, Barton does so, be warned, with the participation of her audience. Specifically men, who are most in need of her housework advice.
This is one of those shows, then, that derives its comic charge from putting members of the public through their paces on stage. It’s one of those shows, too – there are many under the clown banner – where repetition and doe-eyed charm are deployed to pad out simple visual routines to the brink of their natural lifespan. But at least Barton has that charm in spades, and a fine disciplinarian line too, that can keep an errant volunteer in line with just a peremptory flash of the eyes. And so her stooges ascend the stage to fold bedsheets with her, separate clean and filthy linen, and perform a dance derived from routine domestic chores.
There’s a singalong skit too, in which Barton shows off her Julie Andrews-alike pipes. Presently, a strand is introduced into Dirty Work suggesting that our host’s mania for neatness is linked to a bad breakup, of the kind that might lead you to, say, hurl your partner’s possessions out of the house and into chaotic disarray on the street. In an entirely silent show, this hinterland is glimpsed but not explored on an upstage screen, while back in the here and now, we’re left watching two volunteers laboriously tidy Barton’s stage.
At such moments, it can feel like the show’s ideas have been stretched fairly thinly to fill this fringe hour. But no denying that, as host and performer of this paean to pristine, Barton brings a befitting sparkle and shine.
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At Underbelly Cowgate, Edinburgh, until 24 August
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