REVIEW: Butt Kapinski @ KOMEDIA

Butt Kapinski

Komedia

Brighton Fringe

May 12^th

Butt Kapinski is the alter ego of American performer Deanna Fleysher, a vintage meta monochromatic gnomic gnome who shuffles and stutters round a landscape created from segues and stereotypes instantly recognizable, and reproducible by the audience. Fleysher is an astonishingly good worker of crowds, instantly winning and able to elicit engagement and interactive gems from a stone.

“Think it’s a solo show? Think again. Private eye Butt Kapinski invites you to choose-your-own-adventure in a film noir rife with shadows, sex and subterfuge.”

The audience are mapping the plot in this piece, Butt waddles around the space, lit by an overhead lamp which he carries around on his back, part penguin, part private detective he’s constructing us a film noir in a hour, dissecting and exposing the clichés and meta narratives that we all know and love while getting various members of the audience to act out vignettes of plot, from murder victims, to battered wives, reporters, taxi drivers and quite an astonishing number of hookers. With his beguiling speech impediment this leads to a lot of laughter.

It’s a fun hour in daftness which doesn’t seem to quite pay off as far as a satisfying Film Noir plot ending is concerned but them with some neat meta-meta narrative and some easy ‘Bobby Ewing’ plot reset everything reaches a satisfying end.

But….

There’s more to this than meets the eye, Fleysher in her guise as Butt is performing some subtle magic, playing with cliché and expectations, allowing people to the play in the company of others, getting an early evening British crowd -who haven’t had that much to drink- to transform into a room full of teasing, flirting, toying hookers ( the men in the room)  and their masturbating johns ( the women in the audience)  and all the time shifting narratives on gender, power and status. She transformed herself into the stage, interrogator, narrator, teacher, empower and releaser of inhibitions and does it to a crowd.  Keeping the laughter focused at Butt, who is the literal but of the joke. That’s some skill. We is impressed!

“No seat is safe.” Says the listing info, but although every single member of the audience joined in last night, no one felt unsafe, there was a genuinely moving performance or two and Fleyshers sharp and relentless wit and whip like asides kept a stag night well under control and the rest of us corralled into some pretty sleazy narrative. While the plot plunges down into the gutter the narrative changes and enlightens, with some superb ‘time out’ moments of pure instruction talking about the power of words and how we use them carelessly. I love a serious clown.

I could gush about this show for ages, it’s wonderfully complex but also terribly simple. It works because it’s fun and people like to play, given the space and permission to do so.

I took a friend, who hates interactive, immersive theatre, shrinks back from any idea of being part of anything, and he loved it, chatting all the way home about the sheer fun he’d had and this is pure festival gold! The narrative might be familiar, the plot might not always land well, but the hour spent in the ridiculous and collaborative presence of Butt Kapinski has been one of the highlights of my festival so far.

This was a connective, transformative evening , fully engaging everyone in the room with everyone else and allowing Butt Kaplinki to shine. Later I saw two men in the urinals congratulating another man -who they didn’t know before – on his sensitive portrayal of the tender unrequited love of his character Lola.

Delicious!

There are eight million stories in the naked city and last night we created another one.

Recommend, book NOW! Two shows left!