The Covid-19 Variations, Birmingham Rep, review: you’ll even pity Donald Trump

How did celebrities – whose role is to court public attention – cope with the enforced privacy of lockdown? It’s a natural subject for artist Alison Jackson, whose fake footage of pop stars, politicians and royalty, cannily shot using look-a-like non-professional actors, appears to offer tantalising glimpses into the private lives of the rich and famous.

Her work has been seen in galleries across the world, and on TV, but this is a first: Birmingham Rep artistic director Sean Foley has helped to edit together a 23-minute film to accompany a piece for the piano in 19 short movements. That The Covid-19 Variations is written by Richard Thomas, best known for Jerry Springer: The Opera, makes some sense of this seemingly unlikely collaboration.

It started with a different collaborative relationship, however. At the start of the first lockdown, pianist Phillip Edward Fisher contracted Covid; then Thomas did too. From discussing their experiences, as friends, came the idea for a piece that would musically reflect 19 stages of lockdown life and getting ill. Thomas’s titles for each movement are displayed within Jackson’s filmed footage, from “I’m going to learn a new language” to “Please don’t end me”.

Fisher’s performance can also be comic – a movement called “Covid hair!” is a single long-held note, and we all know exactly why. But the initial Gershwin-style sprightliness soon turns increasingly frantic, with bursts of manic ragtime, before descending into a more morose, minor-key mood. Thomas’s music dictates how we interpret Jackson’s images too, of course; even Trump can look pitiful in the later, mournful movements.

Jackson’s look-a-likes – from Kanye and Kim to Kate and Wills – are as convincing as ever, to the extent that one unwitting audience member in the Q&A that followed asked concerned questions about the mental health of Jackson’s subjects. Shot as silent grainy footage or blurred long-lens shots, at odd angles or through cracks in a door, her performers look just enough like the most famous faces on the planet for our minds to fill in the gaps – we want to believe.

In an era when celebrities put more of themselves out there than ever, you might expect Jackson’s work to diminish in potency. But questions of what’s real and what’s fake – and of why we have this desire to pull back the curtains on famous people’s indecorous private lives – remain live, and give her work a charge. And they are usually rude and lewd, from Trump being urinated on by prostitutes to members of the Royal family getting drunk or into cat-fights.

Many of the images used here are recycled from her archives, however, and have already been seen on Instagram. While there are repeated shots of celebs forced to do their own ironing, the film doesn’t always feel like it especially reflects the restrictions or specific stir-craziness of lockdown. Still, setting such images to a piano recital feels both genuinely new – I’ve not seen anything quite like it before – while also nodding back to the birth of cinema, and live accompaniments to silent movies.

The Covid-19 Variations is a funny hybrid, neither quite concert nor film nor theatre, and you sense the free drink and live Q&A are needed to justify the ticket price. But it makes for a brief, lively evening’s entertainment that manages to raise a laugh at the terrifying absurdity of what we’ve all been living through – even celebrities.

No further performances. Information: birmingham-rep.co.uk