Williams' series of tragi-comic monologues explore the darker side of human natue with skill and humour, says Emma McAlpine.
“I joined the circus when I was 16″, says Donald, a wild-eyed clown wearing a multi-coloured onesie, smudged make-up and white powdered hair. Donald is one of six roles that Nathan Dean Williams plays in his dark storytelling show, The Buffet, which also includes a woman feeding her husband to death, a rabbit in a broken home, an abused cross-dressing husband, a pet collector and a psychotic mummy’s boy.
Over the course of an hour, we hear a series of ten minute tragic-comic monologues by characters as macabre as any in The League of Gentlemen, but with more insight into what makes them tick. Donald is perhaps the least interesting of the lot, as a clown that ruined a children’s party by giving a pecan custard pie to a boy with a nut allergy. The grotesque housewife Christine is more compelling, as a lovelorn woman who can only control her cheating husband by feeding him until he’s dependent on her: “I couldn’t be his lover so I was his mother.”
Skilfully blending comedy with pathos, Williams breaks up the monologues with entertaining costume changes, videos and dances. His transformation from a woman into a fluffy rabbit is particularly amusing; not least of all when he gets stuck and has to tell his technician to play the interval music one more time. An accomplished actor, competently pulling off accents from West Country to Cockney and Brummie, he embodies his subjects so well that the audience frequently let out horrifed gasps at his characters’ confessions.
At times, as the script veers more towards the tragic, you can almost forget you’re watching a comedy show. Yet the absurdity of his creations and the fact you’re never allowed to dwell on one for too long, ensures an undercurrent of laughter is sustained throughout. There’s some talented writing on display here as well, his final soliloquy has a glorious poetic rhythm to it, not dissimilar from Dylan Thomas’ Under Milkwood.
This show won’t appeal to everyone. If you like your comedy light and your gag-per-minute ratio high for instance. For those who find a perverse delight in the darkest depths of human nature – you’re going to love it.
Nathan Dean Williams Presents… ‘The Buffet’ is at Just the Tonic at The Store from 8-9pm daily until Sunday 28th August.
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