This Review is from August 2025

Most of the audience really enjoyed this performance of Rosa Garland: Primal Bog. I was in the minority. The clown appears naked on stage and covers themselves in paint. That’s more or less it. What on earth is going on?

According to the press release, which I read post show, Rosa Garland says: “Finding your pleasure isn’t always clean or aesthetically pleasing, especially when you’ve grown up queer and closeted. I want audiences to dive into the strangest and most liberating ride of their lives, to embrace curiosity, tenderness, playfulness, and even flippancy with our bodies rather than constantly ‘preserving the merchandise.’ Come into the bog; the mud is fine.”

I just didn’t get this show and that is on me.

A version of this review appears on Episode 4 of the On the Mic: Five a Day podcast.