Weighty issues are discussed in Selina Thompson’s debut solo show, a piece that rethinks the concept of body art and which is both playful and painful as it unpicks Thompson’s relationship with food, and in the process makes us think about our own. At one point chocolate snacks are handed around the audience. “Help yourselves,” says Thompson cheerily, “eat until the basket is empty.” She would. She’s a self-confessed binge-eater. By the end of the show, trails of crumbs litter the stage as if Hansel and Gretel have been on the rampage. The crumbs float in puddles of milk, globs of rice pudding stick to the fridge and donuts stuffed with pages torn from fashion magazines are small obstacles scattered across the stage.
Beginning with her body covered with brightly coloured balloons that she pricks (along with a whole lot of the media myths and moral panics surrounding “the obesity epidemic”), Thompson always tells it as it is. She isn’t “chubby” or “well rounded” or “porky” or “dumpy”. She’s fat. Over 20 stones when she last checked, which she doesn’t any more. What is the nourishment that she is so desperately seeking? Why do so many women hate their bodies?
Some of this is familiar territory covered by writers including Susie Orbach and Naomi Wolf and on stage by numerous feminist theatre companies long before 24-year-old Thompson was even born. But she brings her own messy, funny live art perspective in a show that is both jokily digestible (“If you had your hand in my cheeseboard, I’d have my cheese knife in your hand”) and queasily compelling as we watch Thompson stuffing her mouth with chicken as if her very life depends upon it. No, it’s not at all pretty, but it’s unashamedly honest and provoking, and Thompson is so personable that you could eat her up.
• Until 27 November. Box office: 020 7491 4841. Venue: Camden People’s Theatre. Then touring to 6 December
