Main Character Energy, Edinburgh Fringe Theatre review - 'A playful take on the one-woman confessional'

Temi Wilkey of Main Character Energy | Pic: Jade Ang Jackman

Main Character Energy

Summerhall @ the Roundabout (Venue 26)

★ ★ ★ ☆☆

 

Temi Wilkey is a big-time actor plagued by small-time roles. In her schooldays, she was cast unfairly as disruptive, in her school plays as ‘functional men’ or doctors. Main Character Energy is her attempt at correction. “I am Blanche DuBois!” she seethes, festooned with pink feathers and frills. “I am Juliet!”

We are taken to the beginning. She is young – an eight-year-old girl glued to Nickelodeon, who emulated Black child stars. She is still young at 12, only grander. It is a playful take on the one-woman confessional, but it’s woolly, and wants a greater sense of anarchy to ground the vagaries of its structure. 

Wilkey highlights the differences between her home life and that of her white friend, Poppy, whose family represent a quaintness and harmony one might expect on-screen, as opposed to off-stage. She wrestles with a plain, white mask, then catches herself: “This show isn’t about race! It’s about me!” 

Wilkey toys with her audience expertly, and an earlier staring competition in the stalls gathers greater significance. We’ve been lured into looking and what we are witnessing is an existential breakdown – the roots of which Wilkey side-steps, accommodating the inattentive programmers already guilty of looking the other way. 

Josephine Balfour-Oatts 

Until 26 August

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