Give us this day our daily dead.
Absurd New York cult clown duo Xhloe Rice and Natasha Roland are back at Edinburgh Festival Fringe with their third genre-defying show A Letter to Lyndon B Johnson or God: Whoever Reads This First. This is clown theatre that picks up where Beckett left off with Waiting for Godot; only these clowns are boy scouts preparing for a glorified American manhood in the era of Lyndon B Johnson and the Vietnam War.
As with Godot, the script is absurd, tightly written and redolent with sinister undertones. Their performance playfully veers from childhood game to war game to the actual battlefield, with Beatles songs and other Vietnam War anthems evoking the era.
The set is a bare stage and a large tyre. It’s the costumes that really set the scene. Their boy scout outfits are covered in badges, their legs smothered in mud and their faces painted in gaudy clown masks, evoking an innocent American boyhood with a hint of war in the caked mud and stained uniforms and a hint of tragedy in the clown masks.
Rice (who plays Grasshopper) and Roland (who plays Ace) are a theatre company of two. Impressively, they write, direct, choreograph and perform all their work. In Lyndon B and last year’s Fringe show And Then the Rodeo Burned Down they explore tropes of masculinity and Americana (last year it was rodeo clowns, this year boy scouts). And all done through a queer, gender fluid perspective.
The choreography is as tight as a drum. Many lines are spoken in unison with accompanying movement. The stage is in the round and they shift constantly to address all sides of the room. Their movement is fast, exact and bursting with a mad, kinetic, youthful energy. Their lines are also fast-paced and delivered with over-the-top boyish American enthusiasm. The dialogue and action is so fast that it is not always easy to keep up, but the audience roll with the madcap performance regardless.
Read: Festival review: Through the Mud, Edinburgh Festival Fringe
This is a unique theatre experience and a fascinating examination of masculinity, Americana, childhood innocence and American glorification of war – made all the more interesting by the fact that it is performed by women.  A Letter to Lyndon B is a most impressive and innovative display of American theatre.
A Letter to Lyndon B Johnson or God: Whoever Reads This First will be performed at theSpace @Niddry St until 24 August 2024.
