Performance
15th June 2007
Toynbee Studios
Part of Artsadmin Summer Season

Ladies and Gentlemen, tonight, Richard Dedomenici is going to be full of strange information. Some of it will be useful. And some of it will not be useful. And some of it will just be strange.

Sat in a gaffer-tape-and-string mock-up of an airline seat and adjacent windows, Dedomenici rambles through a collection of anecdotes and observations, turning to speak to a camera that relays his big cheeky face onto a hanging screen which faces the audience. As a result the whole piece is literally delivered as an aside - albeit one transformed into an open and intimate monologue to the room. And what an odd room to deliver it in… wood panelled, parquet floored, musty… as if Dedomenici were briefing, say, the Joint Intelligence Committee somewhere in Whitehall. Now there’s something I’d like to see.

Why would I like to see it? Because it would be hilarious. Dedomenici is a mess. He’s a fucking disgrace. Under-rehearsed and forgetful, he’s reading his half formed script from the inside of an airline safety instruction card. Some of the notes don’t even make sense to him (“What? Eh?”) He’s using a recalcitrant remote control to operate / not operate the surrounding technology (“come on, come on, work. Play the clip. Play the clip. Just this once.”) Anecdotes trundle to a halt, having gone nowhere. It’s all in-jokes, gas and filler. He’s crap, and it’s great.
Yeah. You heard me. Great.

“I know some of you paid 12 quid for this, which is appalling, quite frankly,” mutters Dedomenici at one point. “Like I say this is a work in progress. It’s going to be better when I do it properly,” he claims, before pointing out that the eventual staging of the show ‘proper’ and its specific circumstances (in a small flat, to a largely invited audience of British Council reps during the Edinburgh festival) will probably preclude us ever seeing it. What we’re getting is notes for a possible show; a flight plan, a forethought.

What’s the show about? Oh shut up, who cares? Apparently it’s ostensibly something to do with aeroplanes. Dedomenici’s usual preoccupations with the absurdities of modern politics appear to have taken a seat in economy class just for this trip, and instead the journey is largely a personal one, illustrated by stories about school crushes and arguments on holiday. Occasionally the Dedomenici of old, the artist who produced Political Top Trumps or attempted to impose a congestion charge upon pedestrians during the Edinburgh Fringe, makes a brief appearance: he throws us some interesting titbits about depleted uranium being used to weight the wings of 747s, cracks wise about the airline industry being susceptible to three types of strike - lightning, bird and industrial. But the stream of consciousness is what engages, not the thematic unity of the material.

The port window behind Dedomenici relays jittery home videos of past airline flights (oddly affecting in their amateurishness) switching now and then to other archive footage, morphing at one point into the prompt from a karaoke machine so that young Richard can sing along – with no apparent purpose, as per usual. He performs in the mode of stand up comedians such as Stuart Lee or The Iceman (the latter often known to protest “it’s not comedy! It’s art!”) but without the club comic’s basic aim of prompting a constant hilarity. This is something of a relief, in that you are allowed frequent moments of quiet reflection; at one point Dedomenici tells a lovely story about being berated by his ex for leaving a mobile phone on during a flight and feeling, just for a moment, “as if we were back together again.”

It’s this sort of blurring of parameters that live art allows for so well, and the reason why Dedomenici is here before us at Toynbee Studios rather than spouting forth from the Jongleurs or Comedy Store stage. Superjumbo is not necessarily comic, not necessarily politically active, not necessarily even value for money, but there’s still something to be said for the simple skill of being an engaging and instinctive communicator. Even in his pauses for thought, as he reaches for the next cue or tangent, Dedomenici has that skill in spades, allowing the audience to reach for their own cues and tangents. And in that sense I’m pleased to report that he’s still an artist, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Written by Tim Atack

Richard’s website is …. http://www.dedomenici.co.uk/