The main appealing device used in Yianni’s Head is based upon the conceit of a curiously good 90s sit-com called Herman’s Head where four major components of the psyche are personified and become characters who constantly clash over choices and decisions. Herman’s Head had four excellent actors playing different aspects of Herman’s character, but in Yianni’s Head, Yianni has to play all the parts himself. And Yianni had it tough, when I saw him, not only did he have to contend with the loud distracting noise from the show in the above room that sounded like a plane was regularly landing on the roof every ten minutes or so, he also had to deal with a rather loud, drunk group in the audience. It was a strange atmosphere, a cold rainy Tuesday evening, in a big beautiful room at Trade Hall and an audience split up the middle, one side mostly silent and the other side rowdy. At least they were laughing uproariously at Yianni’s jokes, but at other times they were just openly, loudly chatting to one another as if they were at home watching TV. Yianni had to actually stop the show a couple of times, 1st hinting and then asking them to quieten down. It couldn’t help but affect his performance and I felt he tended to rush a bit, so that his words often became garbled and I occasionally had trouble understanding him.
The show is basically an exploration of relationships and the eternal circle of meeting, having the relationship, breaking up and the lessons you learn before moving onto the next one. These headings are up on a PowerPoint presentation (complete with techi pushing the buttons) which Yianni points out would probably have been much cheaper and simpler on butcher paper. I couldn’t agree with him more. Never have I seen a more superfluous PowerPoint presentation. Yianni has a lot of funny anecdotes and observations about relationships and makes great use of the characters in his head, which are Libido, Logic, Fear and Love. Libido is the most fun because he has an outrageous French accent and is named Pierre. None of the others have names and although Yianni acknowledges this, he doesn’t quite explain why. I suspect it maybe because Libido might be his secret favourite. I liked the fact that Yianni explored both the positive and negative sides of these traits and he had fun pitting them against one another and himself. He explores each of them in turn and then moves on to how they drive him crazy when he’s trying to make his way through the murky quandaries of relating to women. There is a fifth character who is briefly mentioned, though not explored called ‘imagination’ which piqued my interest. I thought it showed a bit of lack of confidence that he apologised to the audience for finding it difficult to write an ending for the show, when he had a perfectly acceptable and amusing ending that tied things up. It is an ambitious show about a topic that has been covered many times but despite all the distractions I think Yianni did a great job with it and certainly pushed a few buttons with the clever and amusing analysis of the voices in his head.