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Screw Al Pacino and his upcoming ‘Evening With…’ appearance in London. This is an evening with performers Lucy McCormick and Jennifer Pick, aka Getinthebackofthevan. They may not be even as remotely famous as Pacino, but I can guarantee their offering will feature more booze, more swearing, more nudity and a hell of a lot more shit.
Getinthebackofthevan’s show has the duo onstage in slinky evening dresses, splattered in dubious-looking sticky brown stuff. Lucy is impossibly chatty, Jen is deadpan and dry. They invite us into the home they share, while they sing show tunes, bicker, fight, and chat. Not much more happens in this live-art-cum-cabaret-cum-theatre crossover. At one point two tubs of their poo (not actually poo) are brought out and crap is slathered about the stage. They sing ‘Tell Me It’s Not True’ from the musical ‘Blood Brothers’ and a handful of other numbers pretty well. Lucy gets progressively more naked and they fight with no pants on. It might be titillating, if it wasn’t so awfully and hilariously awkward.
The two are a very funny double act, and together they tear down performance expectations, exposing and exploiting themselves and their art. ‘Number 1 the Plaza’ sags in the middle, where endless, aimless blather makes their purpose too obscure. But by the piece’s end we feel as though everything has been deliberately and gloriously shat on, quite literally – theatre, friendship, and performance art. It’s an unsettling, subversive and raucously funny theatrical takedown.