Stuffed review – urgent warning about food poverty drowned out by clowning

This drama’s title alludes both to a top tier of society over-stuffed with wealth and those on the bottom rung who really do seem to be “stuffed” in the face of hostile government policy.
It is this desperate and often invisible underclass that Ugly Bucket theatre company’s part verbatim play, part musical and part absurdist mime, focuses on in relation to food banks and the nexus of poverty that creates hunger.
Co-directed by Rachael Smart and Grace Gallagher (the latter also performs), it could not be timely enough, given Rachel Reeves’ intention to cut spending and get tough on benefits in the October budget.
Alongside Gallagher, Angelina Moana, Jessica Huckerby, Caníce Ward and Adam Nicholls come on stage wearing luminous orange overalls, hard hats and head torches. Verbatim audio recordings from food bank volunteers and council workers reflecting on food poverty are interwoven with electronic music (by composer and sound designer Duncan Gallagher), as they dance and clown.
It is this combination that jars. The recordings are informative, shocking and poignant, but sit oddly against the hectic pump of music and pop video dance moves (there is what appears to be a DJ deck at the back) while the clowning is strained and the tone sometimes oddly upbeat and over adrenalised.
Actors shout statements into a mic: “This is not a show about food but about food banks.” “There’s a lot of horror in the world right now.” “Everything in this show has already been said.” It is all very angry and urgent, but also approximate and overfamiliar, with no building of arguments, merely a series of absurdist sketches, from a quizshow about “better budgeting” for a single mother, to a man whose guts are spilling out as a rather too obvious way of showing a community eviscerated by the system.
Some of it works: there is a powerful scene in which two pigeons fight for crumbs, but more often it deploys overstretched visual metaphors such as buckets putting out invisible fires on stage.
It is the verbatim testimonies that become the heart and soul of the show. You wish for less music and dance, more of these voices. In the light of Reeves’s announcement, which seems, in effect, to hail an extension of the austerity era, the lessons in this show are absolutely vital. There is a call to action and pamphlets on how we can help. As a vehicle for raising awareness, it delivers the message effectively, but as a drama it is too flat-footed.