Sunday 10th April 2017 - 7:30 pm
I didn’t like Sarah Kendall’s show to begin with and I think by the end I would say I’d warmed to her show, but not exactly heated through. Like a frozen meat pie thrown in the microwave with very little care to its position or time.
Kendall’s show is of a single lie with a small amount of truth in it. The framing device for this is seeing a therapist.
I feel like this element, the why she was seeing a therapist wasn’t really explained to the audience very well, there was a brief mention of her talking about her show last year, which might have given backstory to this fact but...I didn’t see her show last year and mostly just bought a ticket to her show because I recognised her name. For a moment I couldn’t recall where, but it was on Wil Anderson’s Wilosophy podcast. According to iTunes I listened to it, but don’t recall much, but I thought that was enough to take a punt and see her.
I just felt that the ‘therapist’ framing device, seemed...an interesting choice. It was to establish that the stories she tells are just that, stories, with a little hint of truth in it mixed up with embellishments and lies.
At the end, there were some characters who I wanted to be more fleshed out, the police sergeant especially, I wanted to know what happened to him.
Kendall’s show is a show about stories and lies. How they’re crafted and how they’re created, the power and the danger that breeds, and I imagine how that builds and creates a person. Some of the ideas I feel needed more of an exploration. I know that all comedians lie and craft stories, that what you see in a show isn’t the “truth” it’s a crafted experience. Kendall launches that at the start, with the therapist framing device, openly acknowledging that what she says has some bits of truth in it. But I also think this dichotomy of information presented means that you can’t fully engage with the story, even though if you’re not you’re assuming a multi-layer story. The reason I wonder this, is that Kendall establishes that her stories are fiction with a hint of truth. So it makes you wonder if the the “truth” is also fiction with a hint of truth, rather than true “truth”, which stopped me fully engaging with her story.