Theatre

Next! Kiki Kendrick Can't Get Arrested

Alan Hindle | Wednesday 17 November, 2010 10:02

Death can be merciful. I once attended the Mid-America Theatre Conference in Chicago, the largest theatre convention in the US. The company I was with, E.L.A.N., the only troupe actually performing that week, only had one show, so I found plenty of time to wander the sprawling complex hosting the event. A whole wing of the hotel was given over to mass auditions. Thousands of young, desperate actors, singers, and dancers converged to strut their stuff and maybe get a job doing what they loved. Queues of mumbling, yodeling, shuffling, sweating hopefuls filled the corridors to suffer what the industry refers to as “cattle calls”. People were summoned in groups of twenty. Each performer had a minute and a half to sing a thirty second song, hoof a dozen steps and mouth some lines. I asked one of the producers what was the role they were vying for. “Grimus,” said the producer, chewing a pencil into pulp. “The big purple thing from McDonald’s adverts? All this just to be in a hamburger commercial?” “Nope,” said the lead-lipped HB fiend, as she started eviscerating a fresh pencil. “This is skin work. The successful applicants will be performing at restaurants across the country in Grimus costumes.” When you stumble, fluff your line, don’t act hard enough, and the last thing you hear as you wander dejectedly out of an audition studio is the casting director shouting, “Next!” you have ‘died’. But just think. You might have got the job and been Grimus. Kiki Kendrick knows a thing or two about dying. Though she has appeared in numerous shows on British tele (but not The Bill), usually as the tarty sexpot character, she has failed to appear on every other show. In Next! Kiki has compiled the lowest, most embarrassing, career-destroying, soul-crushing, agent-killing moments. Much of the production is pure luvviness, with a glass of wine for everyone, and the audience, whom I suspect were mostly actors, winced at Kiki’s mortifications, reveled in her courageous revelations. Auditioning for parts is grueling and hard on the ego. Reliving those moments on stage requires a bit of bravery, admitting your failures to strangers, but Kiki Kendrick seems to have so much fun telling stories that these tragedies of the ego become nothing but toys to play with. Kiki Kendrick is a beautiful goofball. An acting geek, who so delights in performance she has passed up on her own wedding and a family death to pursue her dream, the pain is part of the pleasure of winning the crowd. After a shaky start Kiki becomes increasingly brilliant, funny and touching in a play that could have become seriously narcissistic and cloying. There is a projection screen that could have been used for more than a few punchlines and the set doesn’t serve the show. Several stacks of actual scripts she’s read for- one stack was accidentally chucked by an intern stagehand- does nothing because she doesn’t inform us what they are, so they remain nothing but several stacks of boring paper. However, these are fairly negligible criticisms, and the screen is finally used after the show to present a showreel demonstrating Kiki has actually been a bit disingenuous. She’s been in a lot of cool stuff, and turned in a pile of fscreen-stealing performances. Hopefully some producer will see Next! and put her in something as big as she deserves. Maybe they could bring back The Bill, a one-off special, just so Kiki Kendrick can get arrested. And there’s always McDonald’s. Kendrick would make for one hot, tarty Hamburglar.

Next! runs until Nov 28 at Etcetera Theatre, 265 Camden High St, etceteratheatre.com

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