A bubbly romance

Pink Lemonade

Assembly Roxy (Venue 139)

Combining dance and spoken word, Mika Johnson’s dynamic, witty and moving solo show is about an affair that starts out sweet but leaves a sour taste.

But while Pink Lemonade is centred around deeply personal relationships, it uses intimate feelings to powerfully illuminate numerous underrepresented aspects of contemporary life related to race, class, gender and sexuality.

When you’re a transmasculine non-binary person of colour, after all, the personal and the political are impossible to disentangle.

Johnson’s story is based around two bad romances. The main one, the one that hurts the most, “this damn seed you planted in me”, is an off-again-on-again affair with Simi, who works in the same bar, clearly shares a powerful mutual attraction but keeps insisting she isn’t a lesbian.

And then there’s Toni, the white girl who’s into Mika but can’t seem to help fetishing and objectifying them.

And all the while, Mika has self-doubts too. Developing that masculine “sexualised swagger” feels more authentic than femininity but is it another kind of act – even one that contributes to their own racial objectification? “Do we ever stop performing?”

Pink Lemonade deftly balances a range of formal techniques against a blackbox set offset by pink. Johnson humorously and charismatically conveys complex feelings and situations though poetic spoken-word material, including lip-synching to interviews, and thoughtful dance movement.

Simi’s ex, for instance, “a waste man throwing his weight around”, gets some cleverly absurd taking-upspace moves. The show elegantly uses personal experience to expose some