Disco Relax

Created 1999

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A surreal examination of Britain at the end of the ‘90s, Disco Relax centres on a fragmented, foul-mouthed, word-association-driven, disconnected dialogue between two women which takes place during (or after) a long night of prodigious drinking. The stage is a table strewn with the empties and other wreckage of a party in what might be some kind of pub-come-disco. Seated alongside the women are three men who function as much as scenery as they do as characters — a VJ/DJ, a guitar player/pub singer and a third man disguised with a plastic Halloween mask and labelled with a sign: DRUNKEN TWAT.

Throughout the piece, Tim Etchells’ poetical and slang-infested text has been punctured by improvisation and mockery as the women slip from hopeless courtroom impersonations through confused jokes and appalling sexual innuendoes to a mood of despair and surreal melancholy.

Alongside the live action, the scraps of video (wound and rewound at fast-forward and fast-backwards) present fragmentary scenes of soap operas, films, home movies, bedtime stories and real-life magic tricks.

Images

credits

Conceived and devised by the company.

Performers Robin Arthur, Tim Hall, Richard Lowdon, Sue Marshall, Cathy Naden
Direction Tim Etchells
Text Tim Etchells and the company
Design Richard Lowdon
Lighting Design Nigel Edwards
Soundtrack Tim Hall / found sources

Disco Relax is a Forced Entertainment production.