Perch

Belvoir Downstairs facilitates a space in which theatre’s capacity for claustrophobia can come to the forefront, and Brian Carbee exploits this well. We are confronted with a man watching, crooning over an unidentifiable someone in bed, keeping lookout, in the dark. His movements are slow and deliberate. He is exacting. Carbee dresses himself as a night owl, as per the advert that called him here. His disjointed, scattered delivery is a touching manner of characterisation that bleeds through the script. He would answer himself as often as leave questions hanging, craving human rapport.

Perch is impressive in its ambition to explore something important — identity and memory. It’s less impressive, though, in how well it executes this. Carbee plays three separate characters, each of them a thread in the tapestry of some insidious night of the past. The audience sees it woven together, bit by bit, waiting for the whole picture. Left with unanswered questions, the show has roused confusion over even Perch as a point of reference. The nature of his true character is… befuddling.

Carbee is a fantastically weird specimen on the stage, and his transformations between characters leave interesting threads of similarities between them. Whether or not his subtle spectacle is enough to redeem the show’s confusing flaws is uncertain. Given this, though, as a 55-minute performance, and part of Belvoir Downstairs’ experimental programming, we are glad that it is performed and can encourage the avid theatre-goer to check it out for themselves.