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Bitchy tale packs powerful punch
REVIEW - SISTERS, SUCH DEVOTED SISTERS
Drill Hall
FORGET taking tea with the vicar, try taking it with Scottish drag queen Bernice Hindley, the pretend niece of child killer Myra.
As niceties go, watching Bernice (Russell Barr) pour her tea while waiting for us to settle in the auditorium’s faux nightclub surroundings is as polite as she gets. As theatre goes, Barr’s award-winning monologue is as powerful, funny and uncomfortable as it gets.
Perched on a stool with the poise of a groom dolled up by stag night pranksters, it soon emerges that Bernice has supped with the devil and hung out with a few in her time as well.
Yet her penchant for shoplifting and blowing up pigeons are small meat compared to the antics of psychotic drag queen Ross, with his hunger for humiliation and violence.
The rest of the characters that fill Bernice’s queeny coming-of-age story are merely as dysfunctional as she – fitting really, given she’s related to a good few of them.
From her alcoholic dad, whose secret porn stash was exposed in a collage made by a fur coat (and probably no knickers) wearing Bernice, to her fire-starting granny, this is Ken Loach meets Mike Leigh on a dark and rainy Glasgow night.
But with Barr’s deadpan and supremely bitchy delivery revealing a genuine talent for stand-up, it is as told by Billy Connolly crossed with Jerry Sadowitz.
Barr is foremost an actor however, and he attempts to bring a vulnerability to Bernice that elevate this above the merely comedic.
Those physical ticks don’t always come off, but the change of mood usually does.
We always know she has a final black tale to tell and Barr definitely packs a punch in the telling of it.
Until October 29
020 7307 5060
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