Gym Party

If you consider yourself uncompetitive, beat the crowds and go see Gym Party. Over the course of an hour of half-drowning, character assassinations and marshmallow chomping, this funny, unsettling performance goes to great lengths to show that competition underlies every interaction we make.

Gym Party takes the Thatcherite worship of free market ideals and drives it to a conclusion that looks like a sports day arranged by David Lynch.

Three competitors are on stage: Chris, Jess and Jen. They each wear a different primary coloured wig. Each dons the unflattering white vests and shorts from a million periods of PE. Each sports a bloody nose. Each gives fragmentary monologues about sporting, romantic and social competition from school.

The trio go head-to-head in a series of games. It starts innocuously enough with playground challenges. But the mood refuses to settle into outright comedy and instead moves from the childlike to more uncomfortable, adult fare. The audience has to vote on who is the most attractive, the richest, the best raised.

Sticking to the principles of pure competition, those who don’t win each round are punished. Again, this shifts into uncomfortable territory via physical blows and genuinely nasty put downs. And since the audience decides the outcome, we are utterly complicit.

This Darwinian competitive streak starts at school, the piece says. All pretence to live free from competition is false. And we’re doomed to repeat what we’ve learned in gym halls for the rest of our lives. In the end, the winner is always whoever gets the last dance.