MY LIFE IS LIKE A YOYO: Lavery, adapted from Castro: Touring
MY LIFE IS LIKE A YOYO: adapted from Angela de Castro by Bryony Lavery
Contemporary Clowning Projects at Birmingham Rep 17 19 October
Runs: 1h 30m, no interval, touring
Review: Rod Dungate, Birmingham Rep 17 October
de Castro looks like a latter day Sydney Greenstreet: the show is dynamic and perfect: de Castro's performance touches your soul.
Sometimes you see a show that refuses to be pigeon-holed for a reviewer it doesn't make life easy, but, usually it makes it a joy. This is definitely the case with Angela de Castro's performance in YOYO. A dynamic and perfect blend of her own idiosyncratic view of life and, adapter, Bryony Lavery's loving and equally idiosyncratic sense of humour. de Castro's performance really touches your soul.
At the risk of doing the play an injustice . . . here's a totally inclusive and welcoming lesbian play: if you're a lesbian woman you'll love it, if you're not, you'll love it too and you don't get much more inclusive than that!
The evening gets off to a great start with a deft bit of wrong-footing an announcement is made explaining that Ms de Castro will appear but she has been delayed. It doesn't take too long to realise what's going on fairly soon we are instructed to leave mobile phones on 'so that we can see who the really important people in the audience are.' de Castro then appears, itself cause for a double-take. With her shaved head, large figure and white suite she looks like a latter-day Sydney Greenstreet.
Like many large people de Castro has a delicacy of movement, a fineness that is matched by her relationship with her audience as she unpacks her life for our entertainment and enlightenment. She literally unpacks it the baggage she carries around with her is made real in a set cluttered with suitcases, bags, trunks and a brief case.
She explores the ups and downs of her life with charming and disarming honesty, revealing for us her childhood, education, a rape, discovering clowning, her sexuality, her eventual meeting with her own ghosts and discovery of freedom. In the most beautiful moment of all she unpacks her clowns for us, they come alive only fleetingly, tantalisingly like a flash of light that is there and then gone. You long for more. The true power of this play must lie in the true power of the clown that the humour strikes us to the quick in its ability to resonate with our own lives.
In a telling note in her biog, de Castro says she believes 'clowns are like angels'. There's certainly a bit of the angel about her, and the effort to believe in heaven could become worthwhile.
Performer: Angela de Castro
Musicians: Sally Davies and Jake Rodrigues
Original Music and Lyrics by Shirley Billing
Director: Gail Kelly
Designer: Robert Mainieri
Lighting: Douglas Khurt
2002-10-18 13:49:30