Piece of Me
Promising a show that “examines surveillance ethics and the cult of celebrity” through (but who else?) Britney Spears, Claire Gaydon’s Piece of Me is far from what I initially expected. What I expected was something akin to a documentary expose or a TMZ-style dramatisation of the already dramatic saga of Britney Spears. I somewhat expected a glorification of her pain— that, once again, all of the focus would be put back into how she was fetishised as a young woman, her struggles with mental illness, her conservatorship. None of this was touched upon here, and it didn’t have to be. We already know. But what was on show was even better than could be expected.
We begin with Claire and her two friends from school, Natalie (Yaz Zadeh) and Chloe (Alex Roberts). As Year 6’s, they chart their time through album releases and hit singles. They’re obsessed with all the big pop groups - Destiny’s Child, All Saints - but above all else, they idolise Britney Spears. As a young girl reaching instant fame with “Baby One More Time,” Claire instantly grasps for any connection to Britney. It starts small, with friends Chloe and Natalie “interviewing” her (with a hairbrush microphone) about her “morning routine” (it’s incredibly busy, of course). Then things escalate when the three girls decide to form a girl group of their own: BabyFaceBland.
The tone of the show manages to keep an upbeat enthusiasm and sense of play throughout that might elude some audience members if their pop culture/theatre knowledge isn’t entirely up to scratch: at one point, as BabyFaceBland is gaining some serious ground (they’ve just been invited to perform their new single at the All School Assembly!), Claire interrupts the action, reconfigures the space to create a fourth wall-breaking talkback segment to talk about the process of making the show. With lines like, “And then she asked me a really good question… why did you write this show?,” Gaydon plays this bit so seriously and genuinely, that you almost forget it’s a joke. Likewise, Roberts and Zadeh, as Chloe and Natalie, play their roles earnestly and gravely. I couldn’t believe there was no breaking whatsoever during Chloe’s private outburst to Claire: “Natalie can’t sing for sh**!” And all three performers could almost be mistaken for NSYNC during their fully-choreographed, noughties era music numbers. BabyFaceBland’s songs, too (thanks to Gaydon’s innocent lyrics and Jakwob’s catchy beats), capture the spirit of early 2000’s tweenagers with lines like “I can see you’re not a bad lad/ even though I’ve only met you twice.” The script is reminiscent of Clare Barron’s Pulitzer Prize-finalist Dance Nation until it zags into the realm of surveillance.
As we pass through the threesome’s secondary school successes with BabyFaceBland and into adulthood, archival video compilations are projected on the back wall. At first, it shows Spears at the beginning of her career— her first success as a member of the Mickey Mouse club, into her Star Search appearance and her first album. As we move forward in the story, we see more shaky camera work and paparazzi-centric material. Soon, CCTV joins in on the conversation, and we start to see politicians introducing it as a useful tool to solve crimes throughout the UK. In her talkback, in response to that trite question, Claire mentions how she was hit by a stranger on the street with a glass bottle. After reporting the incident to the police, she was surprised to hear there was no footage of it due to the camera facing the wrong direction. Claire begins to think, Britney and I aren’t so different after all?
What follows is a wacky foray into the world of tech. Claire starts to dive into facial recognition (which she hilariously calls “FR,” signalling she is very in-the-know), which is currently being used as a law enforcement tool in countries like China and will soon be greatly expanded in the UK. Instead of wondering what would happen if BabyFaceBland got back together (which also happens, but this time, they write pop music about important political issues, like surveillance), she wonders what would happen if the three joined a tech startup, working on a project for the Home Office on the topic of FR. A hilarious roleplay scenario has equally hilarious results: Natalie quits the project because she cares too much about climate change. Yes, none of it makes sense. Through her character, Gaydon fully acknowledges this. Though I couldn’t help but wonder if she was pointing to her dramaturgical inconsisties to enhance the comedy, or if this was a means of putting a band-aid on a problem that couldn’t be solved.
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Piece of Me is playing at Camden People’s Theatre until 1 June. More information and tickets can be found here.
