It's grin and bear it - even on occasion bare it - time at Shakespeare's Globe, which closes its 2011 season not with a bang but with a wearyingly facetious whimper. A nice idea that in differing ways evokes such previous Globe newbies as Helen and The Frontline while paying homage to the Bard's own penchant for many and varied couplings, Chris Hannan's latest aims for a giddy, carnival atmosphere that it only fitfully achieves. As for its apparent obsession with scatology, Hannan at least allows for conversational variety where least expected: "I'm shitness," our heroine Natty (Emma Pierson) remarks late in Act I. There's a linguistic first, at least to me.
This has been quite the week for excrement on the London stage, Hannan's Globe debut following directly on from The Faith Machine, the flawed but fascinating Royal Court entry that gives over a crucial, extended scene to wiping the Ian McDiarmid character's ass. Hannan takes an, um, less hands-on approach, preferring to kick off the second act with a funeral marked out by two sisters letting rip to the realisation that "we are so shit". This in a playhouse that exists to devote itself primarily to our literature's supreme wordsmith? It's as if Hannan wants to be Falstaff at his most down and dirty, all the while holding in reserve Sir John's equal penchant for eloquence and verbal exultation. Despite the valiant efforts of director Raz Shaw's engaged and engaging cast, the tonal shifts don't begin to land.
Indeed, it's a testament to the goodwill engendered by this uniquely enlivening playhouse that spectators make it to the second act at all. Hannan has serious things to say here - and, like Shakespeare before him, knows that a bit of japery (rather too much, actually) helps the sobriety go down.
But that still means sitting through more than anyone's fair share of flatulence (you may be noticing a particular authorial area of enquiry) and verbal folderol and jokes that make no sense: what could possibly be the point of giving the film actor glimpsed only in the second scene the name of the cultural critic and commentator Joe Queenan? (How many in the audience know who Queenan is anyway?) The God of Soho wears its hipness on a distinctly frayed sleeve, as if merely citing "Sienna or Keira or Liam" were in itself to critique the celebrity-scorched times in which we live; now if only they'd managed to get someone like Billie Piper to head the 13-strong ensemble (plus seven musicians).
The plot suggests an aberrant pastiche of A Midsummer Night's Dream, the Athenian royals from that play transformed into Phil Daniels's bearded, growly Big God and Miranda Foster's terrifyingly bronzed and leggy Mrs God. The Missus has a colostomy bag that is clearly visible - "It's postmodern," she explains - and a daughter, Clem (Iris Roberts), who abandons her parents' celestial sparring for the grubby exigencies of life not in a forest but down below, as it were, on Earth. Scarcely has Clem landed amidst the Soho demi-monde - at the Groucho Club, 'natch - before she is taken in hand by a garrulous vagrant called Edwardo (Richard Clews, revelling in the role's excess) who turns out to be bipolar, schizophrenic and agoraphobic. The God of Soho does very little by halves.
That's certainly true of the lippy, self-punishing Natty, a C-list Essex-girl celebrity possessed of the inevitable rock-star boyfriend who goes by the name of Baz. One-time Globe regular Edward Hogg (pictured above) is wonderful in the part and not just because he sports the best sideburns in town. Natty also has a hard-scrabble, heavy-drinking sister called Teresa (Jade Williams) who functions as the "gobby" yang to Natty's grotesquely vainglorious yin: the siblings forever divided by circumstance, prospects and elocution lessons in Top Girls are veritable best buddies compared to these two here.
Hannan clearly revels in language as much as situation, and is capable of a sort of elevatedly grotty poetry to go along with the fecal emphases and a character in Baz who uses "impending" as a verb. (Go for it, dude!) The play offers up anal sex, an onstage band, and a jivey version courtesy of one-time Hair choreographer Ann Yee of the post-performance jig that is the joyous norm at this address. What it doesn't have is pace, definition and genuine wit, especially once the thesis-mongering does its anticipated number on the depredations of the tabloid press. Sure, we live in shallow, foolishly modish times, but does that mean we deserve so aggressively shapeless, posturing and ultimately exhausting a play?
- The God of Soho at Shakespeare's Globe until 30 September
