Emily Weitzman’s debut Fringe show Furniture Boys begins and ends with a paean for the ages… Charli XCX’s ‘Boys’. But these aren’t just any boys, as Weitzman will go on to illustrate across an hour of inventive, playful, and surprisingly heartfelt comedy — these are FURNITURE boys.
The show starts with the New Yorker taking us on a tour of her exes — the lampshade, the chair, the sofa. Also known as Jeremy, Gregory, and ‘the Kyles’, Weitzman’s props are her furniture and her furniture are her boyfriends and her boyfriends are her metaphors for something much greater: basically, the mortality of the human coil.
It’s an immensely quotable show, with puns aplenty populating the first quarter (Jeremy the drawer wouldn’t “OPEN UP!”), before turning into something more affecting. Weitzman’s performance is the star drawer (get it?) here, as she balances perfectly the see-saw between unhinged and sympathetic. You feel such care for Weitzman and her psychologically-complicated relationship with these furniture boys, which is amplified by the multimedia format: a projector, a voiceover, a mysterious backstage area-cum-dumping ground for ex office chairs.
She is a wonderful performer who has something of the Lena Dunham to her delivery — delusional but earnest, dramatic but sincere. Referencing her deep love for a completely broken wooden chair, Weitzman recalls being asked “What are you going to use it for?”. An utterly redundant question in Weitzman’s world of attachment and unfailing belief in the deathlessness of furniture — use it for? Furniture Boys is about the importance of metaphor, and finding meaning beyond the human (literally). Non-metaphorically, the actual furniture itself is also quite beautiful, including the teeny-tiny sofas that—at one point—become shoes. You just have to see it for yourself…
The show ends with a projected video of Weitzman atop a rock, like a mermaid, watching her beloved broken chair sail away with the current… seconds pass, and she dives in.
Overall, Furniture Boys is a superbly creative show which will surprise you with its tenderness and grandiosity. But more importantly, how did they get a full-size sofa into Buttercup?
Furniture Boys is running until 25 August at Buttercup at Underbelly, George Square.
Buy tickets here.
Image courtesy of Jordan Ashleigh, provided to The Student as press