“How many of you here haven’t seen Natalie do this show?” A surprising number of hands are raised – which might explain the laughter arrhythmia that greets Dr Brown Does Nate. You’d assume that anyone coming to this two-night-only event would be doing so to see what happens when Natalie Palamides’ cross-dressing clown show (about machismo, consent and rape) is performed by a man. Accordingly, many of the laughs tonight are of the in-joke variety, as we enjoy watching Dr Brown (aka Phil Burgers) customise this or that bit of Natalie P business. And many aren’t. A sizeable number are watching Nate for the first time – and presumably marvelling that a male performer should address issues around sexual misconduct in such an on-the-nose (and other parts of the anatomy) way.
Mind you, if anyone would do that, it would be Dr Brown – who, let’s remember, directed and helped create Palamides’ show. I went along to this special performance curious as to how the show (the talk of the fringe in Edinburgh this summer) would land when delivered by a man. In the event, such tension as Burgers’ gender might (and occasionally does) generate is released by Palamides’ presence downstage left. She directs her director from just off-stage (“Some sincerity there, Phil!”; “Dude, you got to go for a lady!”) and by doing so, lets Burgers – and us – off the hook. We’re no longer watching a man with responsibility for his own (possibly morally dubious) actions. We’re watching a man who takes instructions from a woman.
That’s only an issue if you came with an expectation, like I did. It’s no problem comedically: Palamides’ and Burgers’ backchat, as she obliges him forever to take the path of maximum awkwardness, is really funny. In the opening consent workshop section, she makes him fondle women when he’d rather stop at men. Later, he teases her (“watch and learn …”) about his audience-participation hit rate, vis-à-vis her own difficulties when she performed Nate earlier in the evening. But he speaks too soon. Selecting a stooge later to be Nate’s “buddy”, Lucas, Burgers meets with several refuseniks. Perhaps they’ve seen the show before? Perhaps they’ve seen Dr Brown before? Both would justify keeping a safe distance.
Certainly, nude-wrestling with Nate, or towelling dry his naked body, is a different proposition when the performer is male, not female. (Whether it’s more or less uncomfortable is debatable.) In the former instance, Burgers doesn’t go nearly as far as Palamides, who in Edinburgh got very hands-on and entangled with her volunteer fight partner. Burgers is bashful by comparison – which is not a phrase I thought I’d ever write.
Overall, the pointedness of Palamides’ inquiry into consent, and of her satire on douchebaggery, is a degree or two diluted here. When Nate is played by a female performer – topless, with fake chest hair, moustache and prosthetic cock – you get ridiculousness for free, yes, but also vulnerability. Palamides-as-Nate can’t be sexually threatening. Dr Brown could be – his act has always been threatening. But he’s working against that here, appealing for Palamides’ reassurance at all the sensitive moments, following his own anarchic clown instincts (as with a very funny improvised handshake sequence) when Palamides wants him to crack on with the story. There’s a starkness to the questions Palamides’ Nate asks about sex that gets a bit muddied in the novelty and self-consciousness of this revamp.
The most interesting moment, in terms of consent, comes when Burgers and Palamides momentarily disagree on what comes next. “Just let me do my thing,” says Burgers, a little snappily – and suddenly, in a show about men seeking women’s consent, a man goes rogue against the consent of its female creator. But watching this version of Nate, I felt less that its politics change with its performer’s gender, and more that it’s a robust piece of theatre regardless. Assuming – an important condition, this – that it’s delivered by a clown as brilliant as either Burgers or Palamides. For anyone watching the show a second time, Dr Brown Does Nate has less to do with sexual politics than with the pleasure of reacquainting oneself with a magnetic stage talent – a performer who can step into someone else’s show, embrace his unpreparedness and just keep those laughs rolling.
Dr Brown Does Nate is at Soho theatre on Tuesday 27 November at 10.15pm. Natalie Palamides: Nate is at Soho theatre until 1 December.
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