When ThickSkin announced this show a few months ago, the youth-friendly touring company now based in Wigan also launched a website. Deliberately crass, it was a send-up of fast-fashion marketing, all clashing colours and false promises. It was quite a laugh.
But you can see why they changed tack. No longer so brash, save some electric pink, today’s more sober site better reflects what a serious – not to mention impressive – play this is.
Written by Billie Collins (remember the name), Peak Stuff does indeed tackle consumerism but not with the tongue-in-cheek pastiche of a comedy show or even the ironic acceptance of the Barbie movie. As Collins presents it, the drive to buy and sell has become debilitating.
The three characters, played with warmth and poise by a superb Meg Lewis, find themselves powerless. In a late-capitalist world where status is found in a running shoe, friendship is measured in likes and the future is unthinkable, they have lost the capacity not only to make an impact but even to feel human. They are haunted by Sylvester’s 70s disco hit, You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real), precisely because they no longer feel real.
In gestures as troubling as they are surreal, they attempt to give their lives meaning by taking direct action. Schoolgirl Alice wages a solitary crusade against a high-street retailer called Oozie, with animal carcasses as her weapon. Marketing associate Ben numbs his emotions by turning online shopping into a fatal obsession. And ex-student Charlie makes his own body a gruesome product to flog on Etsy.
“That’ll teach them the value of things,” says Alice after an assault on the office of Oozie’s managing director, but it is a vain hope. Railing against poverty wages in Bangladesh sweatshops is one thing, but how do you protest against an online world where every conversation is a potential commercial transaction?
Collins writes beautifully in rhythms picked up, underscored and amplified by drummer Matthew Churcher, centre stage and bringing tremendous dynamic range to the performance. Consummately directed by Neil Bettles, with fractured video by Jim Dawson and Izzy Pye, it is no simple take-down of consumer culture but a rich analysis of alienation in the digital age.
