The News Line - UK - REVIEW

theatre

NOBODY KNOWS WHAT THE MASCOT'S THINKING

by

In the changing room fro the Red Pet Bulls, a university baseball team, music is throbbing through the speaker system.

Blue Moose, Bruno 01 to be precise, bursts into the space and completes a full routine of dances in his splendid suit.

He even commences a strip routine, taking off his shirt to reveal his orange curly chest hair. The accomplished act completed the incumbent inside the suit emerges--it is a hot and stuck young man who swigs from a water bottle only to hear, "Yes children, the mascot will be with you any moment" over over the speakers.

The chaos that ensues as he tries to get back into the suit in a hurry is very funny.

Eventually he decides not to bother with the appearance--hoping that he won't be sacked!

Collapsing onto a stool and discarding the suit completely, performer Jordan Herskowitz reveals that he is 22 and is the author of this autobiographical one-man show.

He had started mascotting when at school.

Four years later he had a sex change and became Bruno 01. "When I'm the mascot," he says "no one can know what I'm thinking."

He uses it as an escape from his family--his mum (called Barbie!), his father, who has a fear of broccoli, his doting grandparents, who insist on calling him pet names--even when he's asked them not to, his irritating baby sister and his elder and younger brothers, both who suffer from cystic fibrosis, the younger one having had a double-lung transplant.

Now remember it is only one actor who plays all these parts--from grandmother to girlfriend, and how wittily and deftly he does it. Superbly observed caricatures executed with precision. A performance masterpiece.

An entertaining piece of theatre with rich, thought-provoking, material and a strong message about the value of life and organ donorship.

Goodness knows what the next twenty two years of his life will contain!