Chewing the Fat
Stage@Leeds, Leeds University/Touring
4 stars

The performance artist is not chubby, she insists. Nor is she curvy, well rounded or a big-bottomed girl. She is fat.

She makes these statements while popping balloons strapped around her torso, each one releasing a spray of glitter that comes to rest on rolls of fat that the NHS has branded a major healthcare epidemic and women’s magazines decry as a body out of control.

It’s a body fascism that Thompson seeks to confront through Chewing The Fat.

Part stand-up, part late-night confessional and part performance art, she brings a refreshing honesty to her approach as she rips up beauty images from magazines and stuffs them into doughnuts, pours sand out of a teapot and ladles cosmetically coloured water over herself.

Such candour can tip the comedy scales but at times it is uncomfortable to watch, as when she crouches in front of an open fridge and binge eats a shredded roast chicken. There’s an uneasy tension between her avowed body acceptance and the disgust she displays towards her own behaviour.

The tension is diffused when the scene is immediately contrasted with one in which a basket of apple juice and KitKats is distributed among the audience, making members confront their own attitude towards eating and body image.

A similarly unsettling dichotomy is created when she stands underneath a suspended pinata that’s broken to shower her with rice pudding. If such a container is usually used for celebration, then here it becomes a vehicle of sadness as a letter from her younger self is read out in which she craves a future where she finds nourishment in something other than food.

It’s a scene that’s typical of Thompson’s candid self-disclosure and, when combined with arresting visual images, helps to defuse media hysteria around obesity and nourish an honest post-show debate about the subject.

Tours until December 6, details: www.selinathompson.co.uk