ABOVE THE MEALY-MOUTHED SEA by Unholy Mess

“Meandering Resonance”

Reviewer: Idelle Yee
Performance: 22 January 2019

Above the Mealy-Mouthed Sea is a sensuous deluge of locations fit to delight the Anglophone heart. It moves in visceral, very English fragments of salty sea and forest air; one can almost smell the briny coast of Portishead.

Our guide for the evening is the veritably charming Jemima Foxtrot, who begins as Jemima the Performance Poet. One must say “begins”, for the performance soon reveals the many Jemimas that come out to play. Jemima the Performance Poet begins the immense task of telling a long and winding joke, involving posh schoolboys, pashmina-clutching librarians and fish with unprintable names.

But the punchline won’t come. She can’t remember. So Jemima the Emcee emerges, to explain away lapses in memory as “technical difficulties”. Then the others emerge. There comes Jemima the Emancipated Woman in her 20s, who sings that “kissing’s no sin at all”; Jemima the Aunt to nephews out camping; and – disconcertingly – Jemima the Adolescent Victim of Sexual Abuse, sitting alone in her room as the storm rages on downstairs in the wake of unspeakable horrors exposed.

The different Jemimas slip in and out of each other, an overwhelming current of song and words and memories that refuse speech. Jemima the Adolescent sits curled up in a corner, saying she knew she had to tell when she heard that “you’d done stuff to her too”. When she decides “it’s time for me to come clean”, she takes a deep breath – but cannot speak. Nascent words choke her. She walks off stage. Jemima the Emcee emerges and fumbles around to blast Icona Pop’s “I Love It”.

Above the Mealy-Mouthed Sea is an exorcism of the struggle for articulation. It meanders, sometimes confusingly, and is only rescued from unravelling entirely by Foxtrot’s own natural buoyancy. Foxtrot speaks many words, sings and plays her singing back in loops. They sometimes grow so loud Jemima the Performance Poet must shout over it, and even then she can barely be heard. So many words and sounds and memories resound in the space that it is not unlike being in a dream state, where there is a great deal you do not understand.

While this piece is very much about the sexual abuse of a child, however, it does not delve into the details of the incident itself. It has a surprising lightness of heart that is somehow not at odds with the gravity of childhood trauma, as Foxtrot’s own energy imbues an innate cheekiness and unforced brightness of spirit that anchors the performance as a whole.

Indeed, the production is a resonant portrait of what is even more vital than knowing the details of abuse. Foxtrot’s performance reveals the tension of coexisting with both daylight and the darkness within, but that we will always find our way. In the words of Jemima the Emcee, “I’ll cover for her, how hard can it be… She’ll be alright in the end. She always is”.