‘This is a show about food banks. This is not a show about food.’
There are at least 3,000 food banks operating in the UK. In the single month of January 2024 Citizens’ Advice helped 22,452 people with referrals to them. At the same time, as the rise in the cost of living bites, donations to food banks have fallen.
A folding stepladder, a screen, a mixing desk and a lot of crates. Stuffed bursts onto the stage to a background of techno sound and song; four boiler-suited workers dance, one ascends the ladder and shouts. Stuffed is a very loud show; you certainly can’t miss its message of urgency, emergency and fury.
Members of the cast variously assume the roles of food bank workers, clients, do-gooders and firemen, but their message is always the same – people are suffering, people are desperate, volunteers are burnt out. The gulf between the haves and have-nots has become a chasm. And this is no accident, it’s not even a broken system, an unavoidable disaster. It’s deliberate.
Stuffed conveys its message largely through clowning. Communication between the actors, and with us, is mostly visual, with exaggerated expressions and gestures; the clowns make traditional clown noises, the meaning of which is transcribed in surtitles on a digital monitor. Sometimes it is all very funny, mostly it is simply horrifying. A phone rings constantly. Almost all calls to helplines are about food; a girl whose job it was to answer them was instructed to ask,
‘Why are you in this situation?’
She was so upset by the stories she was told, she cried.
Amid the cacophonous noise we hear the recorded words of real food bank workers, who are mostly retired,
‘The welfare of the poorest is being propped up by retired people.’
(And of course this same statement can be applied to unpaid carers, another group that successive governments have managed to ignore.)
As we hear the stories of some of the food bank clients, so the music gets louder, the relentless beats increase. Panic grows; demand always exceeds supply,
‘We thought it’d be wound up in three months, but the demand just kept on increasing.’
A powerful part of the show for me was the spoof game show Better Budget! Budget Better! in which a hard-up single parent is pressed to choose between one bad option and another. What if your boiler’s broken down, you’ve got serious toothache, and your dog needs a vet? Choose the boiler? Enjoy tooth rot and a dead pet.
The Cost of Living is personified as a devil (BOO!), a payday loan provider wears a shark head and wields a truncheon.
The choices continue: Heat or eat? Food or light? Food or tampons?
As the show’s smiling host tightens the screw of terror, the contestant makes a choice and ends up beaten to a pulp by the shark.
One of the issues Stuffed focuses on is the role the media play in demonising those who have nothing, of pushing the idea of the ‘morally poor’ and ‘immorally poor.’ Most of our media are owned by extremely rich people; no wonder they want to point the finger firmly outwards.
A particularly shocking and effective scene involves a literal interpretation of an interviewee’s comment,
‘This is a sticking plaster for someone who has been eviscerated.’
Guts spill out like a string of raw sausages. There’s a lot of squelching, Three smart passers-by are disgusted – until, that is, they realise we’re watching them, and the virtue-signalling begins. Are they politicians? They certainly bring to mind the many pre-election photo shoots of earlier this summer.
Food banks are of course just one symptom of a society in crisis. Stuffed gives short shrift to the fantasy that wealth at the top will trickle down to the rest of us; what it really does is stay right there at the top, leaving less and less for everyone underneath. Poor housing, poor/no food, zero hours contracts, struggling schools and closed community centres are presented as different facets of the same thing; a deliberate policy of divide and rule, of keeping people in a permanent state of precarious instability and constant anxiety,
‘It’s not sad or unfortunate, it’s organised crime.’
Stuffed doesn’t, however, end there. What’s needed, it says, is community action, a coming together to thwart attempts to isolate us. The food bank workers are doing their best, but everyone can help in some way. The perceived belief that we are powerless is nonsense; no one should be suffering alone.
As we leave the theatre, the cast hand out little booklets; they are full of suggestions as to how everyone can play their part. I’s not just about money either; Can you cook? it asks. Speak another language? Drive?
I came away from the Pleasance with slightly mixed feelings about this production. It is certainly performed with skill, huge energy, conviction and drive, but I did feel it risked preaching largely to the converted (or to those of us who think we’re converted, which I appreciate may well not be the same thing.) Complaining about the poor response to Ugly Bucket’s request for food donations seems to me to miss the point that there are collection points all over the city, particularly in shops and supermarkets; these are often overflowing. Also, in the Fringe not too many people will want to lug cans and packets around with them all day when they are probably seeing several shows; this doesn’t mean they’re ungenerous. Audiences attending an evening performance at a city theatre are simply in a different situation.
The recorded words of the food bank workers had real impact and I would have liked to have heard more from them.
Clowning is something you either enjoy or find frustrating. It appears to be very fashionable just now, and Monday’s audience seemed to love it. The fact, then, that it doesn’t always hit the spot for me does not indicate a problem with the show; just be advised, there’s a lot of it.
In recent days we have again witnessed the appalling events that can happen when people are persuaded to think that their problems are the fault of a minority group. Strong communities have, however, regrouped in force to repair damage and show support for those under attack. If Stuffed can make any contribution to the rebuilding of shared resilience and kindness, and the repair of people’s battered self-respect, then it will have done its job.
Stuffed is an Ugly Bucket production; you can see it at Venue 33 , Pleasance Courtyard (Above), at 14.25 every day until 26th August. Please note there is no performance on Sunday 18th August. Tickets here.
