Ozzy Algar: Speed Queen comedy review – Small-island tales
A launderette provides a space for profound revelation in this funny and engaging performance
We’re in the Speed Queen, the very last launderette on the Isle Of Wight (which is just like your Tasmania, says Pet) and we’re all on a hot pre-wash. Ozzy Algar conjures up a darkly twisted world in just a few moments, one that is folkloric and unpredictable, yet rooted in the utterly mundane (everyone has to wash their socks, after all). ‘Oh we do have fun,’ cackles Pet, this strange and other-worldly minder of the laundry, who knows it’s all on its last legs but still dreams of a girlhood and a siren song.
Anyone who has ever lived on a small island (or even a small place) will instantly lock into the details of Pet’s life: the doctor’s receptionist with notions, the cold-water swimming club, the weird old lady who lives in a bathing hut. And while Pet’s life is Very English Indeed, the specificity of the weirdness, the darkness of the lens means it’s not an England you need to know to recognise or understand. So rest easy and let Algar be your guide with a performance that is a thing of beauty, right down to their trembling fingertips.
So completely do you believe in Pet that a transformation moment feels like a shock, a removal of a mask you didn’t know the character was wearing. But there’s a sly knowingness too, especially when Pet steps into her audience (‘ooh, you didn’t know I could do stairs’). There’s an understanding that our belief holds the mask in place, a knowing twinkle that is pure clown and acknowledges the performance doesn’t exist without the watcher, even as a launderette doesn’t exist without its machines. This is a masterclass in world-building and performance that leans in hard to ancient storytelling techniques to form a gloriously dark folky-weirdo hour that’s also very, very funny.
Ozzy Algar – Speed Queen continues at the Chapel at the Courtyard of Curiosities at the Migration Museum until March 22; picture: Jim Algar.