A charming play about keeping your clown alive and battling for your identity
Chickadee is a manic, lovable play about family, dreams, women’s sexuality and the importance of keeping your inner clown alive. The story of a street clown who under the peer pressure of family and friends metamorphizes into ‘Chickadee the sexy clown’ provides an interesting avenue to explore an array of ideas, and how well it balances these all is hard to say.
An opening Marilyn Monro homage complete with an added red clown nose sets the mood up superbly, before flashing back to an interactive clown street show where the audience joins in. This opening 10 minutes is one of the strongest openings to a show I’ve seen, Feride Morçay immediately wins us over a haunting rendition of happy birthday, before being effortlessly charming and welcoming in her clown show. Later seeing her pray every night to be beautiful and to make others happy, we get a glimpse into her innermost desires. This desire for appreciation will be what sends her down a horrifying series of events as she is pushed into a hypersexual role in TV where seemingly everyone is out to exploit her.
This might sound heavy handed and not hugely original – you’re not wrong. The plot is not a stand out and the longer the show goes on the less of the original charm and originality you see compared to the opening scenes. I really wanted to enjoy this show more, the presentation and aesthetics are charming throughout but often the writing especially the dialogue in the second half is clunky and lacking in saying something new or powerful.
The key idea of “keeping your clown alive” that Chickadee’s soul repeatedly says to her through dream sequences is a strong motif both in the meaning of “keep being silly and have childlike wonder” and as an opposition to the sexual exploitation she faces. Furthermore the constant “women fought for this right” espoused by her mother who dismisses the sexual exploitation does provide an interesting light on what can sexual liberation under patriarchy really mean for women. Between these ideas, spoken about bluntly in a final monologue, and the dazzling opening it feels very Jekyll and Hyde. If the finale and handling of the themes was as strong at the end as in the beginning this would be brilliant. As of now its a fun exploration of some interesting themes, but never lives up to it’s opening.
Chickadee is on at 8:45pm at Zoo Southside every day until the 24th (apart from the 18th)