Ocean Chillingworth has been the low-key force behind various interesting undercurrents in British experimental theatre over the last couple of decades. They’re probably best known as artistic director of the deliciously provocative company GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN, and beyond that, the haunting pandemic-era Royal Court work Caretaker, plus a longstanding collaborator with avant-garde performance legends Forced Entertainment.
Blood Show is their biggest work to date under their own name, and certainly it has a striking premise: there are allegedly 75 litres of fake blood deployed every evening (which Google tells me is about a bathtub’s worth – it didn’t seem quite that much but it’s definitely A Lot Of Blood) and ponchos are distributed to the audience in anticipation of a possible spraying.
Arranged around a pristine white carpet with a pristine white armchair, are three figures, all in pristine white. One is slathered in white body paint; one is drenched in fake blood (under their white clothes). The third is a ghost, or rather it’s a person with a sheet over their head and two eyeholes (I mean it could be a ghost, they never actually take the sheet off).
Eventually the white figure and the red figure indulge in a deftly choreographed fight, which ends with the white figure overpowering and throttling the red one.
There is no time to rinse the increasingly blood-soaked room, but after a while it does repeat, albeit with certain changes. In round two the ghost starts to sing a folky ballad while the other two whale on each other, which adds a weirdly plaintive note to proceedings.
As its hour progresses, Blood Show gets gorier and sillier, with punches flagrantly not connecting and the two figures looking like they’re having fun: it is violence as intimacy, as friendship.
What does it all add up to? Hmmm. Chillingworth’s official line is ‘it’s a call to action to put what’s inside on the outside, to allow the mess, defend against a violent gaze and subvert narratives of victimhood’. I can kind of see what they mean – the vignette of the two fighters starts ‘straight’ and becomes progressively joyous as it gets bloodier. Still, I’m not sure how well defined the journey really feels, and therefore how subversive it is – Blood Show essentially feels like a wry art experiment, not least because there’s a folk singing ghost wandering about (occasionally it grows taller, which is funny).
Meanwhile the ponchos offer an expectation of titillation and viscera that isn’t really met – certainly it is very late on before there’s even the slightest chance you might need to wear one. And it’s worth noting that this sort of repeated-with-a-twist style of work is very much redolent of the aforementioned Forced Entertainment, who do this thing with a fair bit more vigour, clarity and humour.
However: there’s something undeniably compelling about the images Chillingworth has conjured. In particular, the final scene in which the ghost paces the theatre as the lights fade and Martha Wainwright’s ‘Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole’ rings out is evocative and beautiful… whatever the hell it’s supposed to mean.