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Camden Fringe 2023
Cova Camblor exposes the oddities of the English language via her character who falls in love at the drop of a hat. Summary
Rating
Excellent
Carmen is getting married. Literally any moment now. She’s here in her wedding dress and wonderful fluffy slippers waiting for Steve to turn up on the Zoom call so they can have the ceremony. It has to be online because he is currently locked up at His Majesty’s pleasure; although I wouldn’t use that phrase to Carmen, because it’s likely she wouldn’t quite understand its meaning. Maybe I Do…? is very much a show about misunderstanding the English language when it is not your native tongue. Her endless confusions are made all the worse because Carmen is a woman seeking love: but it does seem she is seeking it in all the wrong places.
The simple framing device of Carmen confessing all to the online Priest as they wait for Steve is simple and effective. It allows for performer and writer Cova Camblor to talk endlessly without it ever feeling forced. The audience is welcomed into the conversation as part of the online congregation, there to witness the happy occasion. While we wait, we get to watch this bride-to-be pour her heart out.
There is plenty of humour to be had in Camblor’s Carmen and her endless ability to take words too literally; never suggest it’s a date to her unless you plan to be her next obsessive love interest. She is a delightfully ditzy creation that is a lot more than just an endless play on words. In fact, it feels as if Camblor has spent more time developing the character than the story, which at times could benefit from slightly more fleshing out. It would have been fun to learn more about why she feels so compelled to marry Steve, and quite why she feels responsible for his imprisonment. In fact, there is probably plenty more humour to be had from hearing how he ended up inside. You could easily imagine her returning to Carmen again and again as she fumbles from one failed relationship to the next.
As well as the humour of the language barrier, Camblor delivers some delightful physical comedy. Her efforts not to reply to a text message from the man she really thinks she loves sees her pulled by an invisible cord across the stage back to her waiting phone, in a display that doesn’t need any language to make the audience laugh out loud.
But it is that language barrier that allows for the biggest laughs as she struggles with so many everyday phrases we say without ever really considering how they sound to people not from these shores. When you think about it, how weird is ‘not my cup of tea’ when we use it to talk about anything but an actual cup of tea? You can clearly see how that could lead to confusion in the wrong hands. As for sarcasm, well that simply throws up even more room for misunderstanding, which Camblor mines with delight. Her riff on minors/miners and going down below is a gag made even more enjoyable with the addition of a few inappropriate physical gestures.
Maybe I Do…? is a joyous experience, and Carmen is a character I’d happily spend another evening with. With a little more refinement and additional focus on plotting there really is a whole lot more fun to be had in this idea, with no doubt even more oddities of the English language for Carmen to get confused by.
Written by: Cova Camblor
You can read our recent interview with Cova Camblor here.
Maybe I Do…? next plays at Rosemary Branch Theatre on 4 and 5 August. Further information and tickets available here.
