High-concept verging on slightly terrifying, comic Jordan Brookes’s latest is show is about the not uncommon subject of getting older. Kind of. In a way. Brookes’s response to the ongoing passing of his thirties is, apparently, to get really into RMS Titanic, ‘because that’s the sort of thing that people do’.
Perversely, ‘Fontonelle’ takes its name from a digressionary passage in which Brookes goes off on one about his fascination with the titular soft bit of babies’ heads and how if adults still had it, it would probably get used as a really dumb suicide button. If we’re saying everything has its place here, then I think the inference is the Titanic is what Brookes has gotten into in lieu of having children of his own to focus on. But that may be overthinking it. And the show really is quite a lot about the Titanic.
Coming out wearing what turns out to be a miniature captain’s hat the actual boat, the film and most crucially the relatively obscure stage musical all feature heavily. Brookes apparently made a three hour round trip to see the musical in Southampton and thought it was shit, and therefore decided he'd write his own, which we’re subjected to in increasingly larger, madder doses as the show wears on.
There are things about ‘Fontanelle’ that it would be unfair to spoil. But easiest to say that it’s remarkable Brookes thinks of this stuff and even more so that he has managed to actually get it staged: it is a much more ambitious show than it first appears and I’d be intrigued as to whether he can actually be making any money off it. Like I say, you could look at it as a very strangely coded response by Brookes to the passage of years and the end of his youth. Or you could just look at it as a master of weird shit doing some more weird shit, brilliantly. Whatever the case, this is a blast – Brookes may be getting older and stranger, but his art will go on.