This review is from the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe.
There’s an elephant in the room I need to address first. ‘Body Show’… it gives Barbenheimer. As in, Frankie Thompson and Liv Ello’s show not only has a pink (Thompson) and black (Ello) aesthetic, but it literally features repeated atomic bomb references and a scene in which the pair pretend to be Barbie and Ken dolls and discuss each other’s lack of genitals. It’s also fairly obvious that this is a coincidence and the show should absolutely not be viewed as intentionally commenting on either film, but it’s so striking it feels odd not to mention it. But now I have and now we can hopefully move on!
Thompson’s Ello-directed solo show ‘Catts’ was probably my favourite ‘comedy’ show at last year’s Fringe, and ‘Body Show’ is very much in its linage. Both explore its creators’ mental health issues, both heavily revolve around the performers lip-syncing to an often outlandishly funny visual mixtape of obscure excerpts of ancient adverts and factual shows.
It begins with Thomas and Ello standing together as bride and groom behind a huge wedding cake. She doesn’t say a word but looks increasingly nauseous, slowly turning to anger. In the groom role, the non-binary Ello grins dumbly and occasionally spouts some inane tech bro nonsense. Then the cake splits open to reveal two screens and we’re away into the surreal, Adam Curtis-esque video rabbit holes that are the duo’s stock in trade. Loosely speaking, it’s a show about the pair’s difficult relationship with their own bodies: Thompson in terms of eating disorders, Ello in terms of gender dysphoria.
It never lays this on particularly thick, though. It’s crafted from surrealistic sketch-like sections that explore these ideas more obliquely, often hilariously. Ello, in a rubbery muscle suit, syncing to an outlandish mash-up of old Action Man adverts and recordings of Andrew Tate chatting shit; Thompson looking terrified of Paul Hollywood as an episode of Bake off is spliced with the ballet ‘Swan Lake’; a bizarre ‘Twin Peaks’ homage in which Ello visits a diner where Thomas’s short memoried waitress shoots down all their choices.
At the start, I slightly fretted that the similar use of video to ‘Catts’ was in danger of making them a one-trick pony, and that splitting the focus between performers made it a bit less potent than Thompson’s one-woman show. But as ‘Body Show’ wears on it became increasingly apparent that their videos are so good that it would seem irresponsible for the duo to not base shows around them (to invoke Adam Curtis again: you’d hardly expect him to change tack now). While there was an extreme intimacy to ‘Catts’ that ‘Body Show’ perhaps intentionally lacks, two performers gives a lot more storytelling options than one: it feels wilder and more vivid.
It’s also extremely well-judged, never laying the duo’s personal trauma out too pruriently, but with a section at the end that takes a break from the ironic razzle-dazzle of the videos and ensures the real human feelings are given a moment to breathe.
