The Tron Theatre
Glasgow
February 7-9, 2019

Script:   Stagecraft:   Performance:     

The Tron’s Changing House studio theatre is a delectable wee space, a smaller version of the main affair, compact & cosy but intimate & intelligent. Also compact & intelligent is twenty-seven year-old Katy Dye, whose remarkable contribution to the modern theatrical arts, Baby Face, is based upon her, well, baby face & her delicate, butterfly physique. Katy’s character is also call’d Katy, & thus we enter the passive-aggressive insanity of her self-portrayal more as family members than audience.

Katy takes us thro’ a snapshot retropsective of her earliest years – from yelling baby to horny schoolgirl – blending discombobulating ballet with the most snappiest & effective of scripts. This is vivid theatre that makes the pulse burst with rawness – encapsulating the core of the paradox of living in a society which continues to infantalise women. As Katy came on to a male audience member sat next to his wife, it was nerve-janglingly awkward, yes, but also a crucial head-out-of-the-sand moment for us all. This is a strange thought-haunted world in which we live, with all its its creaks & bangs & psychic torments.

The show pendulums twyx the fragile fun of quirky cabaret to moments of extreme – tho’ at the same time highly riveting – unpleasantness. There is also a garish sexuality underpinning everything. Each scene is cleverly wrought, with Katy unafraid to slip to her underwear to perform costume changes! Her stage persona is a seething cauldron of moving physicality, quite acrobatic bends & twists; perhaps meant to represent the chaos of a young lassie growing up & going supernova with her hormones.

To experience Baby Face is to be the jaw-gaping anvil upon which Katy’s effervescent hammer pounds her psychic blows. A highly polished, thought-provoking, & brutally honest piece, which left last year’s Edinburgh Fringe gobsmack’d, & continues to hold our attention.

Damian Beeson Bullen