Baby

A baby is nestled from the opinion of the world. Sleeping on their mother’s breast, the world is movements of sound. Perhaps that’s where symphonies begin. Laughter awakes the baby from undisturbed bliss. Merriment perchance. Louder laughter at a voice with an upturn, a timing of lines. Yet louder then the turn up to full pitch of baby’s wail, filling the theatre to the ceiling with meaning, a voice demanding attention, a mouth with something to say. Arj Barker is distracted. He knows that voice, he’s heard it before, a straight line wanting air, or milk, or a face, all three. He delivered lines like that himself early in his career, spontaneous and attention-grabbing, on his mother’s breast. It’s the unmistakable voice of need. A need different from his, which is keeping to the script. Argy Bargy could lose the thread. He welcomes hecklers, the thrill of audience interaction, while the audience responds to his well-tended comic material. But this interjector doesn’t use words. Their unpremeditated expression is superior to the sound system, gets in under audience attention, and his intentions. Large Marker is the one with the one-liners, the stand-up tweets they repeat as they walk down the street, undelete, all in the name of the Large ego. This baby’s intrusion is a confusion, a wordless whine lacking comic timing, tingling the chandeliers with primal diffusion, a non-grammatical non sequitur of healthy lungs leaving Large tongue-tied, ego upstaged. Taj Mahaler’s reduced to Garage Parker, his lofty visions at the grandiose Athenaeum an anticlimactic search for a corner to reverse into without crashing the show. Baby babbles at the pretty lights as Taj in his mind fears the worst, a reviewer expert in one-line demolitions of his craft, out of the mouths of babes, and all that. Baby threatens to have the final word, an indignant protest only to be silenced by a nipple. Sarge Starkers is used to crowd control, his delivery keeps everyone in order, feeding from the hand that commands. He stands at ease while they stand to attention. But Sarge is cooling to baby’s heckle, frighting on stage in the emperor’s new clothes. His attention turns to the mother, cuddling her child in the old-fashioned manner, waiting for his next well-timed wit skit. Starkers bawls out the order, take her baby from the theatre, no maybes, or words to that effect, allowing for the shades of English typical of comedy festivals. Barge Harker wants all the attention, that’s show business, his name in lights, viral online. Contrary to baby, who remains nameless, a special command performance repeated every minute of the day the world over, saying It’s Me Time! Mother ups and departs, now the audience has lost the thread, her baby resting into new symphonies. Merriment perchance. While Harker has a farking feeling he won’t be hearing the end of this, on stage in the Athenaeum, up the proverbial creek with a barge pole. 

 

 

 

Image: Detail from the Yoko Ono exhibition ‘My Mommy is Beautiful’ at the NGV Triennial, 2024.