Showing @ C Nova, Edinburgh until Mon 25 Aug (not 12) @ 16:45
Lie Back and Think of England is a riotous mock sexual education class with the strangest substitute teacher you might ever have. Beginning with an absurdist mime routine and developing into song and monologue, when she finally does talk it seems like a sacrilege. It is such a sudden and stark difference when she is finally able to speak aloud about sex, it powerfully illustrates the silence sex is wrapped around.
Rachel Lincoln showcases her incredible range of performance, from the tight-lipped start of the teacher – who nevertheless lies across her desk perfectly imitating an orgasm with only the prop of a marker and marker cap – to speaking at last in a school girl’s tragicomic tone to reveal her first drunken sexual experience.
Lincoln has people rolling with laughter in their seats, but it is an examination, mainly, of how the audience reacts to different conversations about sex. There is a slight discomfort or scandalised tone in the audience’s reaction that gives way as she opens up the silence on sex. It is clear she is interrogating real silences and oppressions, and the laughter we share is the audience’s way of dealing with this aberration of the agreed upon quiet. When she is miming the ins and outs of gay sex with a marker – in a much less bawdy way than straight sex – the palpable silence is a bit unnerving. These repressions are merely pointed at in the show, however, and though funny, the discomfort at feeling other people’s discomfort is not really fruitfully developed.
This absurdist solo performance makes absurdly funny the inhibitions and discomforts around sex. Although it doesn’t strike a deeper note on this issue of sexual repression, for an hour the ice is being broken between everyone in the room. Until the ice reassembles, as the lights go up and the show closes for the day, the audience can laugh about it together.