Stevl Shefn And His Translator Fatima
Live Review

This is a show that can be comprehensively reviewed in just three words: ‘what’, ‘the’, and ‘fuck?!’

In tweed suit and well-trimmed grey beard, the avuncular Stevl Shefn personally greets his audience as they file in, babbling away in an incomprehensible, vaguely Eastern European, language, eager to make friends despite the communication barrier.

Is he really going to perform the whole show in this lingo? Yes, although thankfully a translator, Fatima, is at hand. She intones his excitable patter in robotically unemotional tones from beneath her burka. It means you can hear her but not really see her; while you can see Shefn but not really hear him.

Understanding what he is on about, however, is an altogether different prospect. His disjointed anecdotes involve his hermaphrodite lover, who boasts four different sets of genitals, swinging cats and marriage counsellors/Euclidean geometry experts – to name but three.

Making sense of it, even via translation, is a futile affair, so it’s best just to wallow in creator Steve Sheehan’s unfathomable absurdism. His expressive body language brings the meaningless words to life, while trumpets, keyboards and another girlfriend, who just happens to be a vacuum cleaner, all provide more audio-visual treats.

This strange, strange man has produced something like you’ve never seen before. If you think he’d use the standard translation gag of yabbering away for ages only for the interpreter to say it means something as simple as ‘yes’, forget it. Just let the benign weirdness wash over you, while waiting for the occasional moments of hilarious, warped brilliance to erupt.