Joy, the creepy and hectoring protagonist of Dodie Finamore’s one-person show Something Is Happening is a self-help guru on a mission. Creator and originator of The Happiness Lab, the woman wants you to be joyful. And guess what, she has her very own proven three-step method to get you there. Just pay your fee, get with the programme, and hey presto, the inner bliss you deserve is guaranteed to be yours. But beneath the surface of Joy’s glossy make-up and beige designer suit, the guru is experiencing a dawning realisation: the happiness she promises is an ersatz and insubstantial version of the real deal. This crafty empress knows she has no clothes. Sooner or later something in her life is going to give.
At one level Something Is Happening is a simple spoof on the fluffier fringes of the self-help industry, particularly its exasperatingly banal motivational messages. At another it is a comment on the pressure society imposes on each of us to be happy in a uniform, normative way, regardless of individual quirks and preferences. There are some decent ideas here, but the mixture of comedy sketches, song, audience interaction and physical theatre is uneven. At times it feels very much like a work in progress.
On the positive side, Finamore gets the browbeating earnestness of the archetypal self-help guru just right. Armed with nothing more than intense eye contact and a rictus grin she is like a bird of prey, ready to pluck on unsuspecting lanyard-wearing audience members with a demand we follow her. So intimidating is the character, that you cannot help but join in with a rousing audience rendition of If You Are Happy And You Know It, Clap Your Hands on pain of upsetting her. Finamore has a great voice, delivering a smart banjo-accompanied hymn to the science of smiles with tremendous range. Clever too is a jerky almost epileptic dance piece that tracks the character’s inner turmoil as her world begins to come apart. There are also some well-crafted vox pop interviews on what real people think happiness is.
On the negative side, the comedy skits feel simultaneously underwritten and overlong. Joy delivers a quasi-lecture on the origins of happiness, taking in Aristotle and the United States Declaration of Independence along the way, while eating a chilli. Presumably it is designed as a parody on the worst PowerPoint presentation you have ever seen, but it is too long, lacks gags, and feels uncannily close to the real thing. Another skit in which the guru demonstrates how to make a happiness-inducing breakfast smoothie (concocted of, among other things, red wine, spinach and MDMA) is funny, but goes nowhere.
As one of the corniest of real-life self-help mantras has it, Don’t Wish for It, Work for It. There are some sound ideas in Something Is Happening, but it feels like this writer and performer has better to offer in future.
9 November 2022
Writer: Dodie Finamore
Director: Jake Hassam
Duration: 55 minutes. No interval.
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