In turns fantastic, grotesque and hilarious, Poo Poo Pee Doo, scripted and directed by the multi-talented Anna Jahjah, is a joyous romp in the anarchic spirit of commedia dell’arte. Each of her small compagnie gleefully plays several characters, and it seems, sometimes several characters almost at once, energetically subverting gender, culture, politics and revelling in ridiculous situations, absurd repartee and entertaining stage action.
The comic action is enhanced by the playwright’s decision to have her characters speak in rhyming verse. While the rhyme demonstrates a lively ingenuity, and failure to find a rhyme the subject of several witticisms, the rhyming couplet results in a high-energy, fast-paced dialogue while also firmly establishing the improbable world of the play. This world has its own bizarre logic as do all the imaginary landscapes which Poo Poo Pee Doo lampoons but to which it also pays homage.
In an appropriately Shakespearean tactic, the action begins with the beaching of the good ship Poo Poo Pee Doo, her bombastic Cap-ten (Kris Shalvey) and wily wide-eyed underling, Say-lore (Anna Jayjah), on a desert island. This histrionic pair discovers a still extant July-et Caputlet (a muscular Gerry Sont in a fuchsia satin gown and unlikely blonde wig) mourning her Romeo Mountainscrew. The vanity of the magnificently uniformed Cap-ten makes him an easy target for July-et while the efforts of the jealous Say-lore, disguised first as a palm-tree and then as a parrot, to eavesdrop on this unlikely romantic duo exhibits an inventive zaniness that typifies the whole of the play.
The picaresque plot of Poo Poo Pee Doo follows upon the rather random decision of the Cap-ten and Say-lore, stock characters from the commedia tradition with a Jahjah twist, to set out on a quest for the New World. They disembark in Spain, and are imprisoned by Don, “the first and last” (Sont), who believes there to be no other land than his own, and whose servant Coyote (Anthony White), in a flurry of wildly funny activity, shores up Don’s illusion that he is the centre of the universe. When the Don imprisons the two adventurers as performers in his own drama, Say-lore, cast as a ravishing Dulcinea, and her Cap-ten escape, only to be captured by a dominating Wagnerian creation.
Brünnhilde Gerhilde Ortlinde Waltraute Schwertleite (Kirsty Jordan), Bruny for short, with large blonde plaits, large metallic bustier, a big voice and ego to match, is eager for fresh audiences to conquer. She deceives the questing duo into taking her with them on their voyage of discovery by claiming she knows the way to the New World. Perhaps she does – after all the Vikings had been there before – and they arrive on the shores of the land of opportunity, or, at least, the Hollywood version. Charlie Chaplain (White), Groucho (Sont) and Sugar Cane aka MM (Kirsty Jordan), are readily recognisable cinematic variations of stock types, each with their own exaggerated traits and stylistic mannerisms.
In a crazy denounement, the origin of the good ship’s curious name, Poo Poo Pee Doo, and the motivating factor for the creation of comic theatre are revealed simultaneously. Go to see this play when it is performed again if you want to know the secret. Go to see it because the compagnie is superb. Who can forget the Angel of Silence (Kirsty Jordan) crisscrossing the stage on a scooter, or the cheerfully servile manner of Coyote in his role as humble sweeper to the Don or his intrusive trumpeting as his master speaks, or Cap-ten’s rotund smug self-assuredness? Thanks be for Anna Jahjah, a true comico.
