When the lights come up on playwright-performer Karen Hines’ “Beckett meets Betty Boop” clown character Pochsy in her latest installment at VideoCabaret, Pochsy IV: Unplugged, I’m struck by a vision of French painter Jean-Léon Gérôme’s “Truth Coming Out of Her Well to Shame Mankind” (1896).
Sure, that allegorical figure emerging from the inky deep is nude, while the very real Pochsy on an inky stage is clad in a jacket that gives shades of Grizabella the Glamour Cat, which Pochsy claims as “panda fur” before revealing the translucent blouse and blue gloves underneath (from costume consultant Justin Miller/Pearle Harbour). And Truth shrieks, mouth open wide, while Pochsy smiles enigmatically — even vapidly — as she shares a surreal story of a complimentary voyage on an existential cruise ship in clipped, patrician tones.
Both women, though, are starkly pale, as if drained by the frustrations of life. In Pochsy’s case, the “lack of pink” under her skin, conjuring parallels to the Radium Girls, is a reaction to her job at Mercury Packers. Her years of handling mercury have been rewarded with a unceremonious recent layoff from her employer.
But it’s the eye contact that really does it. Gérôme’s Truth and Hines’ Pochsy both stare directly and unflinchingly at an audience that may dare to stare back, as they reflect to us our little hypocrisies in a system made of large ones.
Pochsy’s come out of her hiatus to satirize mankind, and she’s hilarious.
The bouffon-clown has been around the block a few times; the character premiered in Pochsy’s Lips (1992), where she promptly died (and won Hines a Dora Award). That didn’t stop her from completing two subsequent prequels. Two decades after her last appearance, in her fourth major iteration, she exists in an undefined and variably interpretable space and time. The impression of liminal space persists via Blake Brooker’s light directorial hand in the show’s complete lack of set, the production’s few props (a medical kit and black leather teddy-bear backpack) and dim lighting (designed by Brooker and Andrew Dollar) creating an opaque, fuzzy feeling even if you haven’t taken one of Pochsy’s medicinal gummies – which she will not be sharing.
As a Pochsy neophyte, I can confidently say that you don’t have to have a 30-year-plus background with Hines’ character to quickly understand her mix of oddball conviction, sly wordplay, and bland narcissism. At the same time, you could go over Hines’ text for days to puzzle out the literary allusions, surprising combinations of highbrow and lowbrow concepts, and moments of social satire.
With small, economical movements and a quiet, intense focus, Hines spins a hallucinatory tale that takes aim at, among other things, environmental degradation, the uber-rich, corporate malfeasance, AI, the international rescue dog adoption pipeline, and the anxiety of trying to do the right thing under constant scrutiny when sometimes you just want to have a good time wearing lip stain that may or may not have been tested on animals.
Satire’s a tricky thing in a time when most people are already hurting, full of anxiety, and feeling judged at every turn. Hines mitigates this by having Pochsy satirize the social justice microscope itself, giving a sympathetic ear to the difficulty of making moral choices in a complex capitalist landscape and the fear of losing it all if we’re found wanting. That doesn’t mean she won’t poke fun at those choices, claiming that her panda fur jacket isn’t so bad because it was ordered by accident, and besides, it’s recycled.
Like a Yelp reviewer of her own life, Pochsy milks a running gag where she rates items in incongruous ways, consuming food, scenery, and astral phenomena through her unique star system. For example, what prevents a scallop from reaching five-star status is the method by which it’s served, a toothpick that punctures the seafood and “lets the darkness in.” Her spotlit conversations and ongoing relationship with God — she apologizes for one prayer as being too “transactional” — and frequent a cappella folk songs parodying the likes of Joni Mitchell are equally, weirdly wonderful.
Pochsy IV: Unplugged lives up to its subtitle as a hushed, intimate show, and even with Hines’ spellbinding delivery you might wish for more regular changes in pace or a moment to shift in your chair without drawing everyone’s attention. On the other hand, it’s so unusual to experience 70 minutes of relative stillness that it feels like a privilege to be forced to concentrate, especially with such rewarding material. When Hines occasionally knocks over one of those few props or crumples her dismissal letter into a ball with gloved hands, it lands like thunder in comparison.
A crusader for our times, Pochsy and her mix of cheerful surrealism, materialism, and nihilism are bizarrely beguiling. She is the toothpick-sized hole in the proffered cruise scallop which lets the darkness in; she is Pochsy, coming out of her well to entertain mankind.
A Public Display of Affection runs at VideoCabaret until April 20. Tickets are available here.
Intermission reviews are independent and unrelated to Intermission’s partnered content. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.
WRITTEN BY
Ilana Lucas
Ilana Lucas is a professor of English in Centennial College’s School of Advancement. She is the President of the Canadian Theatre Critics Association. She holds a BA in English and Theatre from Princeton University, an MFA in Dramaturgy and Script Development from Columbia University, and serves as Princeton’s Alumni Schools Committee Chair for Western Ontario. She has written for Brit+Co, Mooney on Theatre, and BroadwayWorld Toronto. Her most recent play, Let’s Talk, won the 2019 Toronto Fringe Festival’s 24-Hour Playwriting Contest. She has a deep and abiding love of musical theatre, and considers her year working for the estate of Tony winners Phyllis Newman and Adolph Green one of her most treasured memories.
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