Lippy review, Maria Studio, Young Vic

The musical motif running through Lippy is Elvis Presley's Crying in the Chapel the second line of which is: The tears I shed were tears of joy. The allusion to joy in this peculiar piece created by Bush Moukarzel and Dead Centre centres on the death of a mother and her three adult daughters who starve themselves to be with God. And, it suggests, to either mark or punish their absent father. It's a bit David Lynch and a bit Enda Walsh and a lot of nothing coming from nothing.

Lippy begins with the amusing premise that we're an audience at an after-show discussion about a play based on lipreading. When the actor fails to show, the interviewer starts interviewing the lipreader behind the drama. We learn that his celebrity began when he saw CCTV footage of the soon-to-be-dead-from-hunger sisters and lipread their conversation...

With a lift of the curtain we are looking into a bare, desolate, kitchen in which the four women are living out their final days and we discover the daughters may have been his children. So far so good. Sort of. At least there is a narrative drive up to this point. After it, we go into what feels like slo-mo. Without real or clear sound, which I think signified the fact that powerless people don't have voices, except one doesn't know what power this family needed in order to eat normally and enjoy life - perhaps it was a dad? - they die. The dim lights dim out completely. Oh good, you think, it's over. How did seventy minutes feel so long? But no. We now have a perfectly fine, but quite unremarkable, few minutes of a close up of one of the women's mouths as she goes over events.

In conclusion: Lippy was a hit in Edinburgh and it's possible that those with an uber-alternative eye will enjoy this piece. Or they too may think it's intriguing and elegantly staged codswallop. Whatever the truth, the tears I was shedding by the end were not alas of joy though I did admire Andrew Clancy and Grace O'Hara's spare set.

References
Lippy at the Young Vic Maria Space, Tickets


Young Vic, 66  The Cut, Waterloo, London SE1 8LZ.  Run ends March 14