Review: Baby Mash-Up, what on Earth are you doing? (Tron Theatre)

Lots of Questions, No Answers

In her programme introduction to Baby Mash-Up, what on Earth are you doing?, playwright Sally Hobson writes that the titular Baby Mash-Up has always had questions, and that we see her search for answers, and ultimately “migrate to the core of herself”. At the end, she writes, “This is the play I have written. What play will you see tonight when watching the show?” There is an implied multiplicity, a promised network of interpretations and take-aways and personal resolutions. Taken in earnest, this means I watched a different play than anyone else who saw it. So what did I think of it?

I think that there wasn’t much to hold on to. We have mysterious chapter titles projected overhead, tap dancing, a lot of staring into the void, and a lot of pseudo-meaningful monologues with lines like “I am history, I am movement, I am a river”. Occasionally, an idea with potential surfaces, like philosophers appearing to pitch Baby Mash-Up about the meaning of life, or a washing machine that represents reincarnation, but they’re lost in these flat scenes that assume the idea is enough on its own. The name of the main character, Baby Mash-Up (played by Claire Lamont, dressed in tap shoes, a Forest Gump t-shirt, and with her grey hair in a messy bun), epitomises the whole show. Sure, we can pick apart the meaning of the name – she is a composite of humanity, she is a grown woman, but an infant against the vastness of time and space, she is a feeling of restlessness to which we can all relate. But the name is never discussed; there is nothing in her character aside from curiosity that reflects these ideas. Everything feels disconnected.

Troubles-era Ireland is the setting, to the extent that a play that is fixed neither on earth nor in time can be set in Troubles-era Ireland. And, to its credit, the scene I found most effective tackled these ideas head-on. In the scene, Baby Mash-Up puts both the IRA and the British Army on trial, to answer for the crime of normalising violence. This is where Hobson’s ideas are both playful, potent, and legible. The play is obviously Beckett-inspired, but leaves its audience behind - and, it seems, most of its cast. Lamont, it must be said, is marvellously committed. She embodied the vibe of the performance so well that I assumed she was also the writer or director. Benny Young happily throws himself (sometimes literally) into every wee role he plays, happily unfixed from any one character or idea. The rest of the ensemble cast seems as lost as the audience, reciting their lines but looking like they are concealing their misgivings about each scene. If there is a version of this that was as richly interpretable and widely accessible as Hobson hoped, it was lost in the rehearsal room. Ideas have been expanded and extrapolated to the point that, short of being in a cosmic existential crisis yourself, it is unlikely to resonate. Two stars.

Whispers from the Audiece: "I feel confused, it made me feel dumb. I don't know if I was supposed to get it."

Baby Mash-Up, what on Earth are you doing? has completed its run at the Tron theatre.