It is the sticky and spiky hidden parts of ourselves that are displayed in Rachel Mars’ entertainingly nasty interrogation of the competitive spirit – which comes laced with song, arson and a large dose of envy. It’s fitting that it takes place in the dissection room, because it is the human heart that is being pulled apart to find that dark, secret place Gore Vidal acknowledged when he declared “whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.”
Frantic Assembly explored the subject beadily with Mark Ravenhill’s Pool (No Water). Now Mars and her fellow conspirators – Louise Mothersole, Rhiannon Armstrong, Rachel Weston, Rebecca Atkinson-Lord and Orla O’Flanagan – twist the knife by making it personal over 60 minutes that take the form of a series of lessons in a kind of church service , complete with a female choir. Mars leads us through these lessons with murder in her heart.
This is very neatly structured and presented with a satisfying dramatic arc and some nicely handled audience participation that makes us face up to our competitive natures. Apparently, evolution has played a part: opposing thumbs helped us to help ourselves and protect our own interests. The voices of the choir rise and fall, and Mothersole’s compositions offer a playful counterpoint, moments of consolation and sometimes a satiric underlining of the itches that Mars scratches. These range from pique at a friend’s new soda siphon to the rage engendered by social media peacocking: “I’ve just realised I’ve only ever showered in two of my five bathrooms.”
It’s not just honest, it’s very funny, too, and streaked with regret as it becomes apparent how, like a fire that needs constant feeding, envy can consume us. The show has a particular (acknowledged) piquancy in the brutal marketplace of the Edinburgh fringe where some succeed and others feel like failures. But it is the wider competitive spirit of capitalism that encourages inequalities which is under scrutiny in a perceptive show. Our Carnal Hearts sorrowfully acknowledges how the system utilises envy as a spur to profit and turns us all into losers.
- At Summerhall, Edinburgh, until 26 August. Box office: 0131-560 1581.
