When greeted into a theatre by two actresses on the door wearing white flannelette nighties, the next thing I expected was not a screen asking me, ‘Are you ready to conceive?’ Hilarious, insightful and sagely satirical, Be Better examines modern selfhood and its concomitant insecurity in floodlit hyperbole.
Urban Foxes Collective presents this immersive, multi-media and multi-layered production, written and performed by Saskia Marland and Elena Voce. The titular imperative, Be Better, is embodied in Elena; the high priestess of a self-improvement cult, in which the audience are unwillingly included. Her performance is assured and mortifyingly funny. Saskia, her sycophantic- sometimes caliban-esque- devotee performs equally as expertly and the dynamic between the two actresses on stage is supported by an excellent script.
In a mission to ‘become all the things, all the time’, Elena runs us through the programme: a kind of facebook-lead eugenics. Elena’s charisma managing to make the infinitely vacuous vitally important. Yet the skill of Saskia and Elena as writers enables them to create a human background behind the technology, evidenced particularly in the final scene: a glittery monologue about multi-national conglomerates and consumerism that cuts through the bombast.
The denouement sees Saskia ascending, as the kind of preternaturally uplifted human we would all like to think our society moulds us into. Yet Elena, the first to be ‘enlightened’ is now dejected on the floor among all the crap, part of it.
Saskia and Elena have birthed a play about contemporary unease and the cult of perception. The handling of surface superficiality and its underlying malignancy is skilfully accomplished and acutely attuned. The girls informed me that the play has had a mixed response from audiences, but as far as I’m concerned, watch this space: Saskia and Elena seem to be theatre goddess oracles of the future.
