What audiences remember most from a political interview, a voiceover tells the prime minister (Kennedy Muntanga) as he prepares to face his TV interrogator (Rebecca Bassett-Graham, coiffed à la Emily Maitlis), is less the words themselves than the tone of voice and the tenor of the body. Muntanga is on point, then: his arms sweep, his fingers beetle and his hands spread out, as if he were wordlessly fielding fly-by questions and offering open statements. It’s the moves and the staging that count.
This setup lands right in the zone for creative duo Jess and Morgs (Jessica Wright and Morgann Runacre-Temple), whose turf is a congenial mix of choreography, film and theatre. In Deepfake, along with writer Jeff James, they explore the various unravellings of an encounter in which the interviewer tries to find the truth behind a surreal – but maybe real? – story in which the PM was seen variously spattered with yellow paint, with his flies undone, and partaking in a ritual involving a deer’s head.
