A long file of wheelchairs waits stage left. A pope enters wearing a white cassock. He counts the wheelchairs and wanders out.
A dwarf enters, his face made up like a skull. He stands for a long moment centre stage. Four young men in black escort the dwarf out. Everything happens quite slowlyβis it to ratchet down our expectations? Is it to ratchet up our outrage? The provocation continues when Liddell takes a microphone and launches into an hour-long screed using the most profane language possible to describe her critics, her audience and the bitterness of life itself.
Excrement and blood are frequently mentioned, together with their associated verbs. That a mature theatre artist, naked or not, spends 40 percent of her new show calling out her critics bespeaks peevishness and a towering ego. If I gave you direct quotes, you would get the full flavour of this diatribe, but why turn off my readers just because Liddell so energetically turns off her audience? Carping at us, we who are all but captive in our seats? Attacking us in the guise of defending herself?
But why from the stage? Or simply put out a blog? After nearly an hour of this, some audience members start to leave. This proves to be a mistake because things are about to get interesting. The windows of the Papal Palace light up. We hear singing. The dwarf, his face painted red, appears in an upper window and sits in the sill, 15 metres above the stage. Young women in white, gauzy gowns appear in an archway ornamented with gothic tracery. A dozen or more extras, elderly men and women recruited from a retirement home, enter wearing hospital sleepwear.
They unlock the wheelchairs and stand behind them. The pope reappears, as does an elderly man, naked except for a black arm band, shouting incoherently at the young men in black. A hospital gurney appears. The young men in black form a relay team to push the gurney. Angelica Liddell runs around the vast stage a dozen times pursued by the gurney.
