Claire Mabey reviews Jo Randerson’s new theatre show about life with ADHD.
On the drive from Wellington’s south coast, through Newtown and the CBD towards Circa Theatre, I listened to Murray Edridge from Wellington City Mission tell RNZ’s The Panel about why he and assorted Wellington mayors and iwi and religious leaders had signed and sent a letter against the government’s move-on orders to the prime minister. “The mechanism shows so little compassion,” said Edridge, among other sensible things.
One of the people I have always associated the word “compassion” with is Jo Randerson. An artist who is to the arts community what Edridge is to social services; somewhere between them is the elongated oval at the centre of the Venn diagram. Even when Randerson’s work is exploring their primary subject, themself, their art always feels like an open act of generosity: that they have had you in mind, woven you into the fabric of the work’s existence. Randerson’s art through their long-running arts company, Barbarian Productions, has always been concerned for the wellbeing of community at both micro and macro levels.
Speed is Emotional explores Randerson’s brain through the lens of ADHD, which they were diagnosed with in their 40s when their son was also diagnosed at age 10. The show carries all of the hallmarks of a Barbarian creation: comedy, clowning, surrealism, music, a hand-made, crafted aesthetic and a deeply cultivated sense of communion with the audience. It’s an aesthetic also shared with Randerson’s brilliant book, Secret Art Powers, illustrated throughout with little doodles created at community drawing sessions. At its core the book is Randerson’s take on how experiences of art can propel us to connect and progress, but at its heart it is a manual crafted by many hands and many kinds of minds.
The show opens with the huge hanging set piece creeping along the floor. It looks like a big-top opened out, or many smaller tents opened up and stitched together, and over the course of the show the fabric is a character in and of itself. At times it is a structure, a shelter, at other times a creature; sometimes it behaves like a kindly presence, an alien octopus ready to defend and comfort and play. “The tent” is a familiar tool in the Barbarian kit: it calls to mind Dress Up Jam where people can come inside a tent and try on costumes and wigs and masks and play; and Soft and Hard, which explored relationship dynamics, that featured a bright yellow flexi fabric wall; and U R Here, Barbarian’s large-scale site-specific processional that led audiences to arrive at a beautiful fabric alien that required midwifery assistance.
“Theatre is a space where I can be as big as I want,” Randerson says more than once over the course of Speed is Emotional. The actor twitches and strides, bursts out from under the tent in a hat sprouting neon fronds, sings renditions of bangers like ‘Hotel California’, ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’, ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’. The stage is theirs; the freedoms available in the theatre life now understood through the mind of a person who, outside of the arts, has felt they’ve had to make themselves smaller, quieter, less emotional, slower. It felt, to me, that this show is Randerson’s love letter to the artist and the expansive, inclusive potential of the arts community.
The audience clicked, clapped, laughed, “mmmm’d” and “hmmmm’d”, called out and gave a standing ovation. Even as Randerson acknowledged that ADHD is “so hot right now” there is clearly a desire to go alongside a person who is living it to see ADHD explored, explained, reflected back. I had many moments of feeling like someone was explaining myself to me (shout out to everyone who can’t walk slow or do one thing at a time) but always leaving a question mark: “Is a preoccupation with death an ADHD thing or a human thing?”
In terms of stagecraft, as well as the beautiful benign presence of “the tent”, projection is used to literally spell out some of the scientific facts; as well as insert a few ingenious gags (“shark DNA” – iykyk; did Jesus have ADHD?). And despite exploring states of loneliness and profound sadness, Randerson is never alone on stage. “Elliot” (Elliot Vaughan) is there the entire time on foley and stings, stage assistance and moments of compassion. And there, in the front row, are Randerson’s own parents who are woven into the narrative as Randerson talks about her childhood, about her family, specifically highlighting traits that Randerson now sees as potential signs of ADHD. At times I wondered how comfortable this was for the Randersons who aren’t Jo, particularly when we’re invited to laugh at them without really knowing them. But again, this is a familiar way of working for those who know Barbarian: Randerson’s parents have been here before. They’ve been there the whole time.
After the show someone asked me which parts were my favourite. I couldn’t really answer. Speed is Emotional is like fabric: it is so strong because of all of the elements together. Randerson’s famous comedic heart is there (plenty of laughs), and so is their vulnerability, and their magical ability to take people to raw and urgent emotion through music and associations but also through their own experiencing of it. Randerson’s face in the show is accentuated with clowning make-up: a mask with a tear drop, neon eyelashes. But rather than hide the person the mask works to make them bigger: all the better to understand and connect.
What I could reply is that I loved the way I felt part of a community in that theatre; that the benign “tent creature” seemed to hold us all together through the undulating emotions; that Elliot was there for Jo; that being yourself is still a radical act; that families can sing and dance; that politics is never far away from art.
Speed is Emotional is on at Circa Theatre, Wellington between March 11 – 28 as part of the Aotearoa NZ Festival of the Arts.
