Jessica Aszkenasy- Titclown
Assembly Roxy
Reviewer: Mark Ritchie
Five stars
It is safe to say I have been faced with many potential reviewing banana-skins over 40-years or so as a newspaper columnist, a reviewer or radio host. This is most definitely high-up on the reviews which have presented me with the largest and broadest degree of difficulty.
Regular readers will be aware that last month in UK Cabaret we interviewed Jessica Aszkenasy about her debut show at The Fringe.
Titclown is an amalgam of ideas based apparently around the premise that women’s bodies can be used for sexualisation purposes, for example in a lingerie fashion show, but also with more serviceable and rather hum-drum intent, with breast feeding a baby for example.
Describing what the audience sees will not help spread a descriptive message to potential viewers, so no spoiler-alerts here. Suffice it to say that the show is performed mainly in French, or at least ‘Franglais’ , (just go with it) we are instructed on a stage-screen.
The show becomes messy, with Ms Aszkenasy’s breasts being utilised as a reward for those with a foot fetish. The eponymous Titclown ‘Tits’ are painted and generally drawn upon, before the artistic symbolism of an expertly woven George Carl style incorporation of Schtick props and items are used against and attached to The Titclown’s naked breasts.
At the conclusion Ms Aszkenasy, now slipping back into English, confessed with the exhortation that we (the audience) should reject the notion this was high art and remember her claim that “I just wanted to do a show about my tits and make some money”. I simply do not believe her!
This is a clown who trained in a famed performing arts school in Paris and her character is presented as a benign good-humoured and mischievous dreamer (think Hippolyta pondering her romance and fast-approaching wedding to Theseus in Midsummer Night’s Dream, while wearing little more than a mesmerising smile and proudly displaying a capacious bosom). Perhaps enough said, as Titclown is one of those experiences where people will use various thought processes to unravel the true meaning of what they see.
This is not simply under-grad humour. This is, in my view, a skilled clown presenting and counter-balancing the arguments which wax and wane through the generations about whether to sexualise or not to sexualise the female body. Done with an element of slapstick fun, this is I suspect a large-breasted woman on a mission!
