This experimental act from Australia knows how to create merry anarchy with incantatory rituals and boundary-free explicitness. Performance artist Emma Maye Gibson, otherwise known as Betty Grumble, warns us about the nudity but this might not prepare some for what comes. A gigantic “pussy print” hangs behind her on the wall and at one madcap moment she begins making imprint smudges of her own vagina on paper to hand out. A (hopefully fake) turd on a plate is eaten with knife and fork. There is a frenzy of naked skids across the floor and a performance of masturbation that feels oddly earnest.
None of it is especially shocking or dangerous, perhaps because it comes in the spirit of fun, and accompanied by synth pop beats from “hot assistant” Craig Slist (Megana Holiday).
Gibson has abundant warmth and easiness but the show is slow to get going in terms of pace and focus. Her alter ego remains an assemblage of outre wig and mask, rather than a fully assumed identity, so feels slightly redundant. The central problem, though, is the lack of story and context. Gibson introduces the show by speaking of her grief for the Palestinian-Lebanese poet and activist Candy Royalle, who died in 2018. She also mentions her experience of domestic violence. The riotous lewdness that follows seems like a ritualistic assertion of joy in the face of those things.
Yet the grief and abuse stay unknown. There is one very potent scene using music and repeated phrases to summon the dark spirit of a courtroom. It carries great dramatic intensity and you wish for more of this.
Even if the show is fragmentary, non-narrative and experimental, it seems too unpinned and lands as an explicit variety act, which may be the desired effect for an artist who defines herself as a sex clown.
Serotonin is briefly mentioned; so are revenge and justice. There are bird sounds and disco beats. It all feels random, helter-skelter. But it also embodies the bare-bodied life, soul and spirit of a bacchanal, albeit a strangely safe one.
• At Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh, until 24 August
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