KEN TOWL ventured deep into an abandoned building site while full of hopeful expectation for a workshop performance ahead of the 2025 Croydonites Fringe
Schmoozing with Schmooma: Amy Gwilliam workshopping her latest one-woman show
I had seen Amy Gwilliam’s evil alter-ego, property developer Frankie Foxtone, deliver a corruscating satire on rapacious capitalism and council ineptitude in Croydon at last year’s Croydonites Fringe Festival.
Her exterior promenade performance led us all the way to the Mayor’s office. Of course, the Mayor wasn’t in. That was the point.
When Croydonites are hosting a show, it is usually worth investigating. A good example of that was Croydonites associate director Katie Hurley’s triumphant performance of her own You’re So F**king Croydon at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe, which she brought to south London earlier this year.
And on Saturday, Gwilliam was back, one of three “Croydon Builds” works-in-progress shows being tried out ahead of the 2025 Croydonites festival.
I took a group of friends, all from outside of the borough. Arts correspondent Bella Bartock was otherwise engaged and, anyway, this really wasn’t going to be her sort of thing. I wanted to confound my friends’ expectations of Croydon.
It was not a propitious start. The venue was The Front Room, the performance space in the semi-derelict 1960s St George’s Walk arcade. I could sense my friends thinking “So fucking Croydon”.
We found seats inside and Amy Gwilliam’s Schmooma began. We learned that Schmooma was both what Gwilliam’s daughter called her and also very much a provisional title, as well as difficult for the otherwise perfectly articulate to say.
Pretty much everything was provisional. This work in progress, according Gwilliam’s own notes, would “always be a work in progress”. It quickly became apparent that we were seeing the early stages of the gestation of an act, and, aptly, an act about gestation.
There weren’t a lot of laughs, apart from a man in the front who seemed to get the giggles at everything that Gwilliam said.
At one point, after a comment about feeling like Sylvia Plath, she admonished him for laughing. “That’s not funny!” she said, which made me laugh.
If it was funny, it was very bleakly so. There was a lot more to this than laughs, though.
‘That’s not funny’: Sylvia Plath might not be a laughing matter, according to comedian Gwilliam
When Frankie Foxtone sauntered down North End last year with her audience in tow, she commanded attention with a combination of carefully scripted comic lines and fast-thinking hilarious ad libs. The roll of paper she carried then purported to be her “Great Plan for Croydon”.
Now, the roll of paper Gwilliam/Schmooma carried on stage was, she confessed, her script. After a short while, she needed to rely on it. The ad libs were not so frequent. Another confession: she was finding it hard to concentrate. Her previously razor-sharp wit was dulled.
The show became, more than anything else, a study in vulnerability. Who, after all, is more vulnerable than a pregnant woman?
When she hitched up her clownish, motley top to reveal her bump, the moment felt quite transgressive. It’s not the sort of thing one usually sees in public, after all.
Gwilliam is a clown and her studied, exaggerated movements only emphasised her pregnancy and her vulnerability.
It was performance that invited – and palpably got – empathy from the audience. Gone was the cynical, brittle confidence of last year’s Frankie Foxtone, replaced by a hesitant Schmooma or, rather, by Amy Gwilliam who discussed with us as she performed what she thought might work and what might not, such as whether to blame Hitler’s mother for Nazism.
Performance and reality became blurred. Gwilliam looked unkempt – her hair was a mess. Was this due to the trials of looking after one child while bearing another, or was it hair and make-up artifice? It was hard to tell and, anyway, sometimes her hair looked like a lion’s mane, a symbol of strength. We were at once guinea pigs and privileged witnesses to a very personal rumination on motherhood and its implications for a woman’s role in the wider world.
Privileged witnesses; that’s about right!
If this is the sort of exciting, envelope-pushing work that the Croydonites can put on as a work-in-progress, then I am already looking forward to Croydonites 2025, and so should you.
- Croydonites are promoting a second outing of Kat McGarr’s Stardust featuring Star Dust at Stanley Halls this Thursday, July 10. It’s a preview of a show to be performed at the Edinburgh Fringe. “We cannot recommend this show enough,” Croydonites say. Click here for ticket bookings
Listen to Katie Hurley being interviewed about You’re So F**king Croydon on our Under The Flyover podcast – available on our Spotify channel – just click here . Important: be aware, there may be some strong language used during the programme. So don’t complain that you weren’t fucking warned…- And check out the Croydonites website for announcements of the 2025 festival
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