My Stories, Your Emails, written and performed by Ursula Martinez (UK)
Hannah Playhouse, until March 15
One of the delights of a festival is the eclectic mix of shows brought together over a short space of time. This is particularly so this year with the range and style of productions seen at the Hannah Playhouse with the final show, Ursula Martinez’s My Stories, Your Emails, being one of the more unusual ones.
As the title suggests the show is in two parts, the first is Martinez reading her real-life stories, and then a video is shown of her strip-tease cabaret act Hanky Panky, whereby she makes a red hanky disappear and re-appear as she divests herself of her clothing. It doesn’t leave much to the imagination to know where the final hanky appears from when standing naked on stage.
Martinez then comes back on stage and reads some of the hundreds of emails she received after a video of her act got on the internet without her knowledge in 2006.
It is a brave soul who can get up on stage and reveal personal and intimate details about themselves in the way Martinez does. And she is to be commended for the polished and confident way she does this. She is also the master of accents, for the most part accurately portraying vocally those people who were part of her life and who sent her the emails.
Although her stories are real and often very funny but with tinges of seriousness, such as name calling when she was seen out with a coloured boyfriend, they are so short and cryptic that the real Martinez never really comes across.
She then reads a diverse range of emails from men of all ages and from all around the world following the video of her act going viral. These presumably were men looking for porn on the internet when they can across her video.
But unlike porn stars who knowingly put themselves out there to be watched, Martinez was there as an unwitting subject of voyeurism. Consequently the emails were more often than not from sad, lonely men trying to connect with her as a person. Many though were funny and cheeky adding a good mix to the variety of emails she read out.
A simple but effective show which could be questioned as to its worth in the festival but which many in the audience seemed to enjoy.
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