Jordan Brookes’ Fontanelle is a stand up show and a musical at the same time; it centres around the question of masculinity and what it means to be masculine, explored around the premise of The Titanic, and the fact that women and children were rescued first. Playing with the form of a standup comedy show, the production also has a chorus of 5 musical theatre performers who interject throughout. At times the interjections are funny and clever, and at times they feel like the concept is being shoehorned into the standup. The show works best when Brookes interacts with the audience, however in order to stay with the convention some of these seem to be rushed, rather than living in a chaotic performance space. Beyond this, the production is uneven — it plays with pacing, but unconvincingly. It plays with the edges of comedy, but without payoff. And it plays with performance, dipping a toe into failed performance, but without properly achieving this — and perhaps even unintentionally demonstrating failure in performance.
This all sounds like it was awful — it wasn’t. There were definitely moments of humour and clever insight about the bind between equality and chivalry....but it all felt undercooked, which meant that it veered into undertones of misogyny to get its laughs.
