Auntie Empire is a prickling puppeteering tea party, with your beloved family member— Auntie. It’s stuffed with everything: from dietary incontinence to puking and Punch and Judy. All this is explored through a satire of imperial Britain. While the structure is sometimes clumsily developed, this mismatched costume of Britishness is surely everyone’s cup of tea (and maybe a tea cake on the side.)
Yes. Indeed, tea cakes are handed out midway through the production, as the audience’s appetites are fulfilled, not only for comedy but also for a slice of appreciation for the nation. The teacakes lure the audience into an idyllic romanticism for Britain which is violently removed as the Punch and Judy theatre at the rear of the stage appears as a violent framing for Auntie Empire’s evil exploits. Audience interaction wears off as the piece goes on, and rightly so, as Julia Taudevin, the lead artist and playing Auntie, depicts Auntie’s brutal acts.
Taudevin completes her performance with sublime ease(no mean feat) and uses audience interaction as a key medium in her work. Tim Licata, the Performance Director, alongside dramaturges: Sara Sharaawi and Kieran Hurley manage to time moments of audience participation well to interweave with the dialogue so as to both compel and suprise. Perhaps this audience interaction it is a little too much in places though and leaves the piece a trifle off-course. Some would say sufficiently so: the audience realise their complacency in acts of violent imperialism.
The way that the piece has been devised, in terms of writing, means that guilt transpires; it falls from the audience in bucketloads, just as Taudevin excretes for the umpteenth time. Each component part suitably attacks the concept of ownership and territorial hunger, while leaving behind the by-product of necessary humour. Sometimes the production does seem a little on-the-nose in terms of its discussion of the themes, and the play is best when it subtly carves up the imperial map of the world rather than slicing it on a plate for the audience to spectate or when Punch and Judy battle it out as King of Scotland and Queen of England, to become imperial allies.
The moments of triumph emerge as the audience feel a sense of connection yet also rejection – a defamiliarization from their own nation, as they reluctantly hear scatters of ‘Rule Britannia’ and Auntie’s scatological issues intensify to represent imperialism’s incontinence in the modern world. While the writing is well-composed in its blind-siding of the audience, more structural development is needed to the storyline. Links to Scottish history feel pinned on, and this narrative feels like an awkward bystander to a high-intensity wrestling match. This is largely due to the well-written dark humour which, regrettably leaves moments of narrative slightly lost.
What does lose you completely, and to insane dramatic effect, is the vocals in Julia Taudevin’s performance style, as the plasticine caricature of the British empire, at once familiar but also terrifying with her garbled posh-speak and her grotesque appearance. At the start of the production, one must adapt to this mocking dialect she dons but what this does is transforms the production into one of glorified clowning to serve the very best means and leaves the audience infinitely hooked.
The design, with its puppet box serving as a backdrop, seems the perfect ‘British’ landscape. Although as the narrative starts to shift and the space for action darkens, it seems inappropriate, and leaves mixed messaging. In tone, the lighting design seems to quash the team’s ambitions for the piece. Lights fire in short, unnecessary bursts and the finale becomes quite incongruent with the rest of the piece. One moment you feel trapped within a perfect British holiday, the next attending some gone wrong production of Cabaret.
But this does not debase the crucial message which this production illuminates. In a controlled, compelling way, it screams ‘everything you have you owe to auntie’ . The empire has controlled all and Auntie — you, your beloved family member — is to blame.
Image by Brian Hartley, provided as press material.