Two friends run into each other at a park. One of them is perturbed, as they are soon to be evicted from social housing. The other provides a temporary place to stay and an idea to raise money through a charity event. This weighty opening scene sets the stage for Artopia’s Art for Art’s Sake, a multimedia potpourri, by many different performers, of dance, music, song, spoken-word and stand-up acts.
It’s straightforward to recognise that the production is on homelessness. What sets it apart is that it has been achieved with people carrying lived experiences of dereliction. The message hits right on the nose when an actor who plays a rough-sleeper eerily tells us “you are only two pay cheques away from becoming who I am”. This substantiality and strength is quickly diluted when the production moves away from its initial setup to a series of solo acts, leaving the spectator wondering whether the two friends raised money at all through the gig, and what they intended to do with it.
Frankly, some of the solo-acts were brilliant, in particular the winsome soliloquy by Uncle Erroll who demonstrated his hypothesis of who’s more likely to end up homeless, taking his prison inmate as his case study. Winsome maybe, but he also told off an audience member for interrupting the show with frequent um-hmm noises. This isn’t something you get from a polished West End musical, but such veritable acts of passion, exasperation and personalisation make fringe performers oddly relatable and familiar.
Yet familiarity doesn’t stand far from informality, a chronic condition in Art for Art’s Sake. Despite its imprecise structure and an inconclusive plot, this raw and occasionally powerful portrayal doesn’t fail to make a lingering effect on the viewer.
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