The BeautifulWhat is beautiful, you say? How do we really define it? Many people still ask this question, and wonder if things are beautiful for how they are presented or what their actual meaning is? Are we beautiful for the way we look or what our personality seems to be? Well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder after all, and the peculiar Petar Miloshevski tells a one-man story of how striving to be beautiful can have the opposite, decaying effect.

The Tristan Bates Theatre is the place to go for unconventional theatre, so the sheer stillness from the audience was not a surprise, along with the considerable amount of questions asked amongst most people at the end. It is always brilliant to have a diverse range of theatre pieces, to show off how differently everyone views the world and how their ideas work deep within the mind. Miloshevski without a doubt ferociously pulls down that fourth wall, creating a character so multi-dimensional that it felt uncomfortable.

My feelings towards this show ranged from the belief that I was in a nightmare to utter wonder: not wonder full of admiration, rather a type that had me thinking about the people out there who agree with Miloshevski about his use of repetitive over-dramatised physical theatre. It spoke to me as an act of pretentiousness rather than a genuine passion and understanding of what he was doing. This being said, the constant slapstick action of falling to the floor mid-sentence was distracting and made his fast paced mumbling even harder to grasp: I wanted to be pulled in by the deep philosophical message Miloshevski was attempting to portray, though this was difficult seeing as he felt the need to push a whole cluster of events into half a minute, then would suddenly turn the whole piece around to do one idea constantly for a whole five minutes.

I believe the general idea to portray how people can ruin themselves through vanity could have made a very interesting piece of theatre, and we should not ignore the miscellaneous costume, make-up and Lady Gaga-style shoes which were superb and added to the eerie atmosphere. However, Miloshevski’s ability to ramble about one idea then move onto a topic that seemed to be completely different somewhat ruined what could have been an alluring piece.

The Beautiful by Petar Miloshevski is definitely not a piece for the faint-hearted and people who like an easy ride, as watching theatre such as this will bring a lot of unease.

The Camden Fringe shows will be playing at The Tristan Bates Theatre until 24 of August 2013. For more information and tickets see The Camden Fringe website.