Skip to main content

Jessica Durand: Over the Top review

The statement "there is a fine line between genius and insanity" has all but been sanctified by Jessica Durand and her Edinburgh Fringe show Over the Top. Directed by Rowan Ellis (hi Rowan I love your essays) Over the Top is a deeply absurd one-woman show that follows Jessica in a WWI-era Downton Abbey fanfiction of her own making. 

Over the Top is the kind of project that could only be devised by the neurodiverse. It feels very much of this era, and I am sure it will resonate with the right niche crowd. Jessica documents aspects of her life such as her forays into the worlds of Wattpad and AO3, her shared birthday with Obama, and her unhealthy obsession with Thomas Barrow, Downton Abbey's very own gay butler. The chaotic world Jessica brings us into is not just that of her own life, but the fanfiction she has devised. It sees her as a humble maid at Downton, who then goes to the WWI front line in order to serve as a nurse. 

But in case you were concerned, the mental illness does not stop there. Durand flits in and out of character in order offer the audience various and, on occasion, surprisingly informative tit bits. I can now safely say I am more educated on blood transfusions, as well as Durand's psychosexual dom/sub masochistic fantasies involving Miss Trunchbull AND Nanny McPhee. It is of course later revealed that Miss Trunchbull and Nanny McPhee are working for the Germans - because of course they are - solely to get at Durand. And the music of Enya plays... it is at this point yet unclear if I am suffering from a stroke. 

Over the Top features the kind chaotic creativity usually only found within a Youtube video. There are various well edited video clips, that are for me the personal highlight. It is nice to feel a sense of community - or perhaps shared trauma? - by bringing a distinctly online feeling humour to an in person show. Though you will undoubtedly leave wondering if everyone should have just stayed at home. Home is safe and warm and has snacks.

All that being said, this chaotic mosaic of a show is a fun way to spend sixty minutes - and let me be clear I had so much fun. I would really like to see Durand lean into an even more melodramatic (or over the top) performance - I do believe she could somehow be even more unchained than she already is. It is queer (in both senses of the word), surreal, packed with laugh-out-loud hilarity... as well as mildly headache inducing - perhaps this generation's answer to The House of Leaves?

While certainly an acquired taste, Over the Top is deeply funny catnip for the chronically online. If you are a “manic pixie dream girl” like Durand this show is absolutely for you, and if you have no idea what that means... stay at home and save your sanity. ★★★★☆? or perhaps one milky way (the chocolate bar) out of five stars. A weird rating befitting a weird show. 


Thank you to Jessica Durand for inviting me. Tickets were provided free of charge and I was given full control over the content of the review.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tuck! review

An abstracted amalgam of comedy, sex and biological disgust, Tuck! (directed by Lou Bristow-Bell) describes itself as a "boun dary-pushing psycho-dream" play. An apt epithet. On this occasion, Tuck!  takes residence in the Baron's Court Theatre, nestling itself under the black painted brick arches of the pub cellar venue - a suitably unsettling setting.  The cast of Tuck! is exemplary. Of particular note are Jack Heffran and Samantha Begeman, who manage to effortlessly recreate the awkward flirting of a couple - in this scene the dialogue shines too. The comic timing and ability to enthral an audience that the entire cast possesses has to be commended.  The play's disturbing moments include: the description of a group ritualistically sucking the blood out of a used tampon, a woman achieving orgasm through being told by how petite she is, and the question "are you wet?" answered not with words - but by reaching between their legs and discovering copious amo...
Post a Comment
Read more

Not Your Life review

Not Your Life follows Jacob (Yalim Danisman), who returns from war to find that his best-friend (Rian Cash) and his best-friends' wife (Lucy Clifton) have made a life for themselves in the house Jacob used to call home. What entails is an exploration of the jealousies and fractures within the trio, as they bubble to the surface after years of repression.  A story conceived by Yalim Danisman (writer and performer) and Ege Kucucuk (director), Not Your Life is performed at the Etcetera Theatre, a small but formidable pub theatre. The Etcetera is a successful catalyst for developing talent. Spaces like this are increasingly rare (the loss of Vault Festival, for example, still casts a shadow) and it is great to see venues providing a platform for up-and-coming talent. Not Your Life is an intimate and varied portrait of relationships, be it as friends, enemies or lovers. All the unfolding drama is against the backdrop of the residual trauma of warfare and childhood. Not Your Life also se...
Post a Comment
Read more

Father, Away She Goes review

Father, Away She Goes, is a funny, and in many unfortunate ways, a painfully relatable production. Performed at "Pickle Studio at Greenside @ Riddles Court" the play follows Sarah, a rather insufferable art school reject. Sarah is coded as slightly vulgar, middle-class, and is a character which I dare say satirises fringe performers and audiences alike. She is messy and unmotivated, she seemingly presides over the breakdown of relationships both with her life-long friend, and with her own mother. As the play unfolds, we learn the horror of the abuse she suffered at the hands of her father as a teenager.  Father, Away She Goes, is a one woman play conceived by Electra Kolb. Kolb puts in a real tour-de-force performance, holding the complete attention of the room for the entire duration of the show. On occasion she will interact more directly with audience members, and I think when considering the small space in which the production currently takes place, lea...
Post a Comment
Read more