Highlight: Peter Sarty’s hyperactive sound design, made up of air horns and 2000s pop hits
Rating: NNNN (out of 5)
Why you should go: Though it at first plays dumb, Prude turns out to be a cathartic, meaningful event.
Can a solo show with a sparse visual world be maximalist? Before seeing playwright-performer Lou Campbell’s Prude, I might’ve leaned toward no — but this rocket-speed hit from Fringe 2022 is a nonstop sensory assault.
From the start of the 50-minute show, director Stevey Hunter and sound designer Peter Sarty blast 2000s pop hits, many so overplayed they now feel detached from reality. To these raucous tunes, Campbell, dressed in a kind of morphsuit (plus a Runescape-esque party hat), moshes around the stage without restraint. Their character soon introduces themselves as the King of the Party, promising to teach the audience how they, too, can have a similarly rockin’ time at social events.
Prude feels very Gen Z, with its hyperactive sound design and jittery rhythms resembling a social media feed in more ways than one. In a vacuum, I’d have complicated feelings about this approach — should theatre really try to compete with the dopamine-generating machine that is the Internet? It seems like a losing battle. But as Prude progresses, the King of the Party’s bombastic surface reveals itself to be just that — a surface, beneath which course rivers of insecurity and regret. Though it at first plays dumb, Prude turns out to be a cathartic, meaningful event.