We sat down with Melanie Branton to chat about her new show The Full English. Running 16-20 September at Barons Court Theatre, get your tickets here.
From gangs of gung-ho Anglo-Saxons and smelly Vikings to Covidiots and Instagram influencers, from enormous vowel movements to katsu curries self-isolating in the Twitterverse, this one-woman show by poet, spoken word artist, former ‘A’ level English lecturer and all-round linguistics nerd, Melanie Branton, explores the fascinating history of the English language through the media of performance poetry, silly hats and dad jokes.
What first inspired you to turn the quirks and contradictions of the English language into a one-woman show?
I have been fascinated by the history of the English language since I was a small child. I have always loved the fact that the story of the people who lived in these islands long ago remains hidden, like buried fossils or archaeological artefacts, in the words we use every day, a story of immigration and multiculturalism, of battles, of exploration, of popular crazes and new inventions, and above all of people making mistakes and then everybody else copying them like sheep. A long, long time ago I used to teach Theatre Studies ‘A’ level, and I kept trying to interest my students in doing their group project on the topic, because I always thought it was inherently theatrical, but they all felt the topic sounded really boring, so it never happened.
Then, when I became a spoken word artist, I spent a long time trying (and failing) to be trendy and doing the kind of hard-hitting, “issue” poetry that I thought would go down well with audiences. Eventually, I got exhausted of that and thought, “OK, so what do I actually WANT to write about, more than anything in the world?” and then I thought, “Hang on a minute – why don’t I make that group project I never managed to persuade anyone else to do?”
The show promises everything from Vikings to Instagram influencers—how do you weave such a wide sweep of history and pop culture into one performance?
I use hats as a linking device. I’d like to say there is a clever artistic reason for this, but the truth is I just can’t resist a silly hat and will pluck at any excuse to wear them. I’m like a four year-old with a dressing-up box. But they’re like magic – put one on and you’re immediately transformed into a completely different person from a completely different time and place. There’s one poem in the show where I’m playing an 18th century bishop. I made the mitre myself from a cornflakes box and an old pillow case, but the minute it’s on my head I start strutting around with my nose in the air being a pompous, snobbish, weirdly camp man – I simply can’t help myself, and I have no idea where that came from.
Also, I’m telling a story and the story of a language is a bit like the story of a person’s life – it shapes itself into a natural narrative without too much input from you. I’m essentially performing a low-tech biopic of Mr (or Ms or Mx) English.
You’re mixing performance poetry, comedy, and even silly hats—how does this playful style help audiences connect with something as complex as linguistics?
A lot of historical linguistics is quite random and silly, so I don’t think there’s too much of a contradiction there. For example, people literally came to blows in the 16th and 17th centuries about where we should get new words from – whether we should borrow them from Latin and Greek or whether we should make them up ourselves by sticking pre-existing English words together like Lego. It was the Brexit of its day, and people got very heated about it. It’s quite hard to explain something that wacky and bizarre without being wacky and bizarre yourself. And another example which you just can’t explain with a straight face is that from about 1400 onwards, vowel sounds started randomly moving further and further back in people’s mouths, so while everybody else on the planet pronounces the letter i as in “pizza” and “ski”, English speakers now pronounce it as in “wine” or “bin”. And linguists still have no idea why we started doing this, but the best theory is that we all turned into Hyacinth Bouquet and were trying to make ourselves sound posher, but just took it way too far.
But when I am dealing with difficult linguistic concepts, I’m thinking, “What’s the simplest, quickest way I can get this across without making people’s eyes literally glaze over?” And if the answer to that question is, “Wear a pair of knickers on your head while using your socks as glove puppets” or “Get four audience volunteers up on stage to do a big song-and-dance number about the Great Vowel Shift”, then that’s what I’ll do.
You’ve been described as “funny, clever, ironic, dry, gripping, needed”—what kind of audience reaction are you hoping The Full English will spark?
I very much wanted this show to be fun, so my main hope is that people will enjoy it and go home thinking they’ve had a great night out, like they’ve been to the pantomime or a party. But I do also make some socio-political points in the piece (you can’t avoid doing that – whatever else language is about, it’s always about power and is manipulated by the people with power to get even more power. And some of the words in our language are there for quite horrible reasons, reasons which don’t reflect well on our nation at all), so I hope they hit home. I like to surprise people, though, and to have that element of theatrical danger where you’re never quite sure what’s coming next.
As a poet, performer, and former English lecturer, how does your background shape the way you explore the history of words on stage?
As a poet, I’m drawn to words which are just fun to say, and there’s quite a lot of that in the show. There’s a poem called, “My katsu curry is self-isolating in the Twitterverse” and another which begins, “Bunting, bagel, buzzcut, balderdash”
As a performer, I’m drawn to big personalities, the eccentric or obnoxious or wonderful people who played a prominent role in the development of English.
As an ex-lecturer, though, I pretty much shamelessly based the structure of the show on the English Language ‘A’ level syllabus, with deviations for things I thought were important or interesting that they leave out.
The show is billed as “mainly for immature adults, but also suitable for children 9+”—what makes it resonate across generations?
I don’t think most people ever really grow up, do they? Everybody loves call-and-response, and doing actions, and terrible puns, and silly costumes and joiny-inny bits. I like to get the audience involved as much as possible – it makes every show unique and takes some of the pressure off me – but I think that appeals to people across the generations.
I wrote it for adults, but younger people seem to like it, too, and they’re a tough audience. If you can keep a 9-year-old interested for two hours, then you’re not going to have any trouble holding the adults. It’s a terrible admission for a poet, but I’m not great at processing auditory input myself and tend to lose concentration if I haven’t got anything visual or kinaesthetic reinforcing what I’m listening to or unless the performer is really putting on a performance, and I try very hard to put on a performance that even I would be able to concentrate on.
Ultimately, though, I think the material itself has a timeless appeal. Doesn’t everyone love words like “poppycock” and “discombobulation” and the stories about where they came from?