Retail Therapy

Out of Character/Written & Directed by Paul Birch/Devised & Performed by Christie Louise Barnes, Adam Bell, Colin Benson, Louise Carter, Ros Church, Rob Crowe, Nathan Fearon, Laurie Furnell, Mark Gowland, Wayne Hurton, Anna Lewis, Sam McAvoy, Paul Murtough, Jamie Towey, Chloe Timpson & Rachel Wall/Movement by Christie Louise Barnes/Graphics by Mark Gowland/Photos Jackson Portraiture/2017

Retail Therapy is Out of Character’s first comic revue show. We decided after our most recent productions (Disturbing Shakespeare & More Tales from Kafka) to work on some lighter material and devise some comedy. We wanted to stretch our comedic potential and using rehearsal techniques drawn from American improvisation (Saturday Night Live, The Groundlings, IO Chicago) we set to work kindly resourced with a grant from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

As we began to create we noticed a running theme - commerce - developing in the improvisations. It seemed that everything seemed to be connected to consumerism. As we pushed this further we reflected that there was a genuine madness in the way the world works but, somehow, finds completely acceptable. There is an saying in American television comedy that every sketch ever written has at its heart, one of the two following conceits; A mad character interacts with a  sane world or a sane character interacts with a mad world.  The theme of mental illness, then, also began to show itself in our work.

Then something cataclysmic happened. They shut Bootham Park Psychiatric Hospital. We found ourselves devising a theatrical response to our mixed feelings about the situation and what it might mean. In a world where it is possible to pay £1,100 for a burger or 2.7 Million on diamond encrusted trainers and yet not have enough resources for health care. We began to create comedy satirising our own frustrations and experiences within an under resourced health care system.

But don’t let that put you off! If ‘laughter is the best medicine’ many audiences have enjoyed our dose of silliness, satire, sketches and surreality. Retail Therapy’s main purpose is to clear up that nasty case of ‘gloom’ which you may have come with and may result in some spontaneous chuckles but, according to the instructions, it may also have the additional side effect of breaking out a rash of questions.

As Peter Ustinov once said, ‘Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.’