Grey suits, grey hair, grey static. In the soulless void of an unpopular radio station, deliberately dull acts of repetition create an hour of absurdist filler. Blending clowning and performance art, stubbornly stagnant Moot Moot hones its point within the first five minutes but continues to push it for an hour until the room is restless.
Rosana Cade and Ivor MacAskill are doppelgangers and radio hosts named Barry and Barry. With moustaches and modulated voices, they slowly spin and skid on office swivel chairs, rattling off bland pleasantries and asking their listeners to call in. They chatter incessantly but never listen, their questions rarely leaving space for replies.
There are echoes of Forced Entertainment’s Real Magic, in which the same trick was performed over and over for an hour, as Moot Moot trades in repeated skits of the Barrys talking themselves in circles. At the British sign language-interpreted show I attend, Amy Cheskin’s emotive signing lends a lot of welcome energy to the otherwise largely static piece.
Through its insistent dreariness, the show critiques how we conduct debate, particularly through the funnel of talk radio, where the loudest voices tend to be prioritised. But we understand that early on – there is no change or twist, only a dull void of repetition. However aware Moot Moot is of its own ridiculousness – “This is a show that matters,” the Barrys say as their words turn to gurgling gibberish – it never transcends the boredom this approach creates.
Moot Moot has little of the skill or potency of either performers’ previous work, and heads begin to droop as the fourth or fifth skit comes around. Perhaps it is a wider critique of how we talk ourselves into corners with those who look exactly like us. Perhaps it is a play on the fact that no theatre can really matter in times like these. Perhaps it would have been smarter and funnier as a 10-minute sketch.
• At Summerhall, Edinburgh, until 25 August.
