Chris Eldon Lee reviews “366 Days on Kindness”, which is at Birmingham Repertory Theatre until Saturday 21st December 2013.
This is a strange little hybrid show that would sit quite comfortably on the Edinburgh Fringe.
It’s a sort of a cross between an episode of Esther Rantzen’s “That’s Life” and a local Women’s Institute talk. It’s performed by Bernadette Russell (with a little help from her partner Gareth and his extensive collection of single shoes) and it’s called “366 Days Of Kindness” because 2012 was a Leap Year.
In that year, in response to the terrible riots of 2011, Bernadette decided to perform a little act of random kindness every day towards a complete stranger – just to see if it is possible to change the world by being kind. It probably isn’t, but she had a jolly good go at it and even though the year is over, she still can’t stop herself.
She confesses to having been rather unkind as a child; forcing her little sister to drink urine and dressing up her cat as a baby. So she’s got some ground to make up by presenting tube passengers with flowers, giving pedestrians un-expired lottery tickets and leaving little notes of good wishes in phone boxes. You may remember the story. It had 72,000 followers on twitter at the time.
She even set herself strict rules. Thou must never say no. Thou must smile at strangers. Thou must not have a day off. And then she broke them.
You kind of get sucked into the retelling of it – particularly when she describes the reactions she got, which ranged from hugs to tears to complete indifference. How would I have reacted, I wondered, if a middle-aged woman in the street had handed me a copy of “50 Shades Of Grey” for keeps?
She fed seeds to birds, a croissant to a dog and a plate of fondant fancy cakes to a group of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
The show is curious, amusing and rather amateurish – especially the video clips which verged on unintelligible. But it was also calming, charming and infectious and I was glad to see it.
70 minutes later I was still not sure if little acts of kindness could change the world. But walking back to the car, it was impossible to pass a beggar by. So the show certainly worked for him.
Visit www.birmingham-rep.co.uk for information about Birmingham Rep.