amy lame'

“ARE YOU LACTOSE INTOLERANT?” Amy Lamé screamed as she forced a woman to take a shot of skimmed milk, felt her up, and proposed marriage to her. After the show, I had to take a moment to clean cake off my face. A ticket to Unhappy Birthday is an invite to an absolutely insane party.

This is immersive theatre, which Lamé describes at one point (I paraphrase) as “pushing the audience as far as possible with no reward”. The reward, of course, is in allowing yourself to be immersed.

In a nutshell, you’re invited to a crazy Morrissey fangirl’s birthday party: the party is regressive, with its games of pass the parcel, party poppers and the occasional childish outbursts of its host. It’s also progressive, with its self-aware feminism, encouragement of audience mobile photography, and topical hipster ribbing. Our temporal setting is 1982, spelled out in sanitary towels on the fire doors: the year the world began, the year The Smiths got together.

The Camden People’s Theatre is an excellent space for this show: small enough to keep the party as intimate as possible but large enough to allow Lamé to sprint around with wild energy. It takes a lot to carry a whole show by yourself; it requires a huge amount of vitality and character, which Lamé certainly has. With darkness surrounding you, you are completely focused on the table in the centre of the room and the projector screens at either end of it. These screens show, at various points, lyrics, photographs and a diagram that shows how Lamé and Morrissey are basically best friends. These are well-executed: absorbing without distracting too much from the action. The lighting tells you where to look, pointing your way with spotlights, and the rectangle of light bulbs over the stage centre cleverly transforms into a dressing table mirror.

Occasionally, seemingly to keep pace with the show’s soundtrack, certain moments were drawn out for too long. This meant that Unhappy Birthday sometimes flagged, momentarily losing its manic momentum. This is my only real criticism, although I would also add a disclaimer: in a show that involves the audience so heavily, no two performances will be the same and your experience of Unhappy Birthday will depend on the character of the crowd. If you’re not prepared to go along with Lamé, you’re not going to enjoy this show. Your immersion will potentially involve playing quite an active role in the production, observing some terrifying things being done to food, and having various substances smeared over you. Lamé does an excellent job of drawing her audience in, making them feel at once awkward and at ease, but it takes a certain type of person to allow themselves to be drawn in.

Overall, Unhappy Birthday is great fun, well-designed and excellently performed. Its depiction of fandom in all its hilarity and insanity is powerful, sometimes amusing and occasionally uncomfortable. Also, I am now sworn to seek and serve Morrissey in all persons: you should probably be prepared for that commitment.

Unhappy Birthday is playing at the Camden People’s Theatre until 1 June. For more information and tickets, see the Camden People’s Theatre website