Trouble, Struggle, Bubble & Squeak (Above at Pleasance Courtyard) is a sweet, heartwarming show combining storytelling and stand-up – though a bit more of the former than the latter. That’s not to its detriment. Victoria Melody is an engaging storyteller and gently pokes fun at herself and her quirky way of dealing with life’s vagaries.
She appears initially as somewhat hapless, and the tale begins with her recounting weekends spent with historical reenactors, despite being seemingly singularly unsuited to the role. But she throws herself into the group wholeheartedly, wanting to understand their obsessions.
Trouble, Struggle, Bubble & Squeak soon morphs into a more serious tale of a Brighton council estate and its encounters with bureaucracy, when just trying to improve their lot. Warm-hearted, genuine people sometimes break the rules – arbitrary rules, usually – for the greater good of the community, and we meet a cast of characters represented by cardboard cut-outs, despite being real people (bar one who was real but, as Vic says, has died now). If you don’t love them all by the end, it’s hard to imagine why!
Feisty, sticklers for authenticity and sometimes reluctant to join in, each character plays a part, and Vic recounts how she won them over with her own seemingly madcap idea of creating a community garden in an overgrown bramble patch, using her knowledge of ‘The Diggers’ agricultural protestors from her reenacting friends.
Of course, the Council sends round a bureaucrat to check the risk assessment – all tickety-boo until the day when the community (and at least one of the reenactors) and its wonderful spirit take over. It sounds like it was a chaotic, beautiful mess we’d all like to have been at. Melody’s depiction of how it all unfolded is brilliant and had the audience enraptured. It was as if we had been there too.
The denouement is nice and tidy – a real feel-good ending to an engaging David and Goliath story. It teaches us lessons too about what can be achieved with belief and heart and an amazing greengrocer who fed 500 during Covid, but I suspect could easily have fed the 5,000.
And all of this is set in Brighton. Or is it just a figment of Melody’s wonderful imagination? It really doesn’t matter. It’s a wonderful story with lessons we should all learn from. And what better vehicle than gentle humour to get a message over?
