On the Conditions and Possibilities of Hillary Clinton Taking Me as Her Young Lover

Richard Meros BA. is the ultimate millennial charlatan. In his mind, he’s an academic; in reality he’s unemployed. This alterego of performer Arthur Meek delivers one of the smartest bits of writing at this year’s Fringe. Ostensibly, it’s a lecture rationalising why Hillary Clinton should take him as her lover, which includes getting the audience to send her letters. In fact, it’s an astute deconstruction of generational divides.

Meek’s suave, smug performance as his conceited, right-wing alterego Richard Meros is spot on—“All I want is better transport, healthcare and education,” he tells us. “And lower taxes”—but it’s the stunning script, by Meek and Geoff Pinfield, that makes this show extraordinary. Every line is stuffed with blink-and-you’ll-miss-it wordplay, with a heady fusion of high and low-culture references. Meek debases the academic veneer by stuffing the lecture with nods to Coleridge and Miley Cyrus in the same breath.

It’s deeply, provocatively political too. The topics in Meek’s sights are many, all skewered with sharp satirical wit. The sexualisation of young women, particularly celebrities, is scrutinised and set against the straight-laced primness of politicians like Clinton. How absurd the idea, we’re supposed to think, that “America’s Next Top Momma” might take a young New Zealander as her lover. And yet how quickly we got over Bill’s indiscretion.

In a dizzying climax, the lecture swirls into mise en abyme as Meros imagines himself delivering the lecture to Hillary herself, starting from the beginning over and over again. Meek and Pinfield manipulate language with masterful dexterity. Don’t be fooled into thinking that superb euphemisms and intelligent smut are all this is. It’s comedy for a generation of Googlers, with allusions that speak to breadth rather than depth of knowledge, and it's top-notch satire to boot.