Looking for Paul - Wunderbaum

Looking For Paul, produced by experimental Dutch theatre troupe Wunderbaum, begins with a deceptively polite presentation by "Inez van Dam", a Rotterdam citizen who strikingly resembles Wunderbaum member Maartje Remmers. Regardless, the veracity of Ms van Dam's identity matters less than the arguments being presented.

Van Dam lives and works in the shadow of Santa Claus, a statue by American artist Paul McCarthy, known to Rotterdammers as "the Buttplug Gnome" and made possible by the Netherlands' enviable system of public arts funding. Van Dam hates the statue, and particularly hates that she paid for it with her taxes. When Wunderbaum hear her story, they take her to Los Angeles to instigate a debate with McCarthy over who pays for art and why.

That's the plan, anyway. Much of Looking For Paul has van Dam, Wunderbaum and their American liason reenact their email correspondence, bickering over what they are trying to achieve. While this supplants the debate they aimed to inspire, watching Wunderbaum caricature themselves as grandiose and self-absorbed is less fun that it sounds, while their arguments grow increasingly repetitive.

The show ends with a version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in the grotesque style of McCarthy himself, either as an homage or a savage parody. Foodstuffs and fake faeces are sprayed and smeared with abandon. But while there are many reasons for forcing an audience to feel disgust, there is no excuse for boredom, which is the only result. Still, by the end, the theatre does resemble post-recession arts funding: it stinks.