Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner review – social media storm lit up
Royal Court, London
Jasmine Lee-Jones's play follows an online battle about the Instagram star and tackles racism, misogyny and colourism
The lights are still dead when this play opens. A wrapped-up body is dragged on stage and dumped in a grave. This is not the outright murder it seems but the acting out of a digital fantasy. The imagined victim is the titular celebrity. Her virtual killer is Cleo (Danielle Vitalis), who has created a Twitterstorm with threatening messages suggesting ways to kill her (method 1: death by poison).
The reason she wants Jenner dead, Cleo tells her friend Kara (Tia Bannon), is because she has appropriated black women's beauty, wearing it as a "costume" for profit. Jenner's cosmetic fillers may have brought large lips into fashion "but when MAC Instagrammed a picture of a black model with lips of the same width she was called ugly".
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