Review: A SPECTACLE OF HERSELF, Battersea Arts Centre

In her PhD on “Deconstructing the Spectacle: Aerial Performance as Critical Practice”, Dr Laura Murphy had a singular mission: “to challenge normative ideas attached to and embedded in aerial work”. In A Spectacle Of Herself, she delivers on this challenge with style and conviction.

With sassy direction from cabaret legend Ursula Martinez, this intelligent blend of TED talk and circus fires off in every outward and inward direction as we explore Murphy’s queer and sociopolitical perspective through a refined semantic, sexual and sensual journey.

Weighty concepts like the nature of reality are thrown around with a clown projected onto a screen making cod-philosophical pronouncements (“we are a piece of meat suspended between the vagina and the grave”). The navel-gazing is brief and pointed as she determinedly breaks down what she likes and detests, spitting out her views with a studied anger even if the targets are somewhat obvious. At one point, she jubilantly decries those she takes issue with; in her eyes, the Royal Family are “c*nts”, the government are a bunch of “c*nts” and gender critic JK Rowling? She’s a c*nt too. 

There is a four-part thread of sorts running through this all: astronomy and space travel; capitalism and its modern avatar Elon Musk; her relationship with her partner Ruby and her sexuality; and her mental health. She commits to all of them in highly creative ways demonstrating what they mean to her. She kicks off jumping around to Gustav Horst’s "The Planets" before, perhaps inspired by “Mercury, The Winged Messenger”, she ascends a rope dressed in bulky white clothing, slowly twisting like an astronaut moving through the vacuum of space. She joins some topics together, describing how she completed a jigsaw puzzle of the solar system with Ruby during lockdown in a touching example of their life together and her fascination with the cosmos.

The concept of “space” is often put through a different lens: the space she takes up in an academic world still dominated by men past and present, the space she takes up on the road as a cyclist and the feeling of being an autistic person who suffers from panic attacks in environments which cater mainly for neurotypicals. It is a smart piece of exposition which goes beyond mere wordplay and finds resonance with the interesting facts she throws out (for example, New Zealand has effectively banned the immigration of those with autistism).

Musk is a particular bête noire of hers. Murphy lip syncs several excerpts from his speeches, pumping up grey cylindrical balloons at groin height or whizzing around on a hoverboard as he proudly proclaims that his Starship came in at 69m (Musk has a penchant for the puerile as seen by his Tesla cars’ four models being named S, 3, X and Y). Her joyful piss-taking has a sharp satirical edge which never veers into esoteric territory.

Alongside the projected clown who warns that Western civilisation’s sole saviour is “human cognition and courage” and that we should be “putting the art pedal to the floor”, there’s time for some absurdist clowning of the Doctor Brown variety as, with a cardboard box upturned over her head, she headbutts a microphone over and over again to the sound of Whitney Houston singing “I Will Always Love You”. It’s a wonderfully marmite moment in the show which sees her eventually fall to the floor with the mic and then continue bashing it with her box until the song ends.

Martinez’s influence can chiefly be seen towards the end. Her iconic signature act Hanky Panky is a cheeky mix of striptease, humour and magic and, in the final third of the show, Murphy gradually sheds her clothes to explore public and private views of sexuality and sensuality. She takes issue with the Diet Cola ads of the Nineties, not because of their stereotypical view of the women who lust over a handsome half-dressed man blissfully unaware of the kerfuffle he is causing, but because she always wanted to be the one being objectified. Topless, she perches halfway up the rope casually swigging from a red-and-silver can in a pitch-perfect parody while the audience whistle their appreciation. She follows that up with a deliciously sordid portrayal of her sex life - both alone and with someone else - which evokes all five senses.

With its eclectic range of art forms and a broad scope which stretches from the far reaches of the universe to her own clitoris, Murphy’s A Spectacle Of Herself (like the artist themselves) constantly surprises and defies categorisation and seems determined to be seen as a work of performance art more than anything else. That’s no bad thing as this edifying and entertaining work would feel equally at home in a Spiegeltent or a university lecture theatre.

A Spectacle Of Herself continues at the Battersea Arts Centre until 27 April.

Photo credit: Holly Revell

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