Review: RIDE: a new musical, Forge (Vault Festival)

Martini Rating: 🍸🍸🍸🍸🍸

Freya Smith and Jack Williams’ brand-new musical RIDE, is quite simply sensational. An endlessly fresh and innovative musical delivered by only two actors and four musicians, brimming with plenty of heart, rhythm and story, this one is not to be missed.

Bolstering a strong narrative, RIDE is proficiently bold, well-written, engaging and thoroughly entertaining. Set in 1895 and following 24 year old Annie Londonderry, who has returned victorious to America as the first woman to cycle around the world, this vibrant female-led two-hander, wonderfully enacts as Annie telling and embellishing the story of her travels. With the unwitting assistance of a secretary named Martha, she delivers the retelling to several big-wig New York editors, aiming to demonstrate her versatility and secure a paid newspaper column. Smith and Williams thus, phenomenally capture Annie’s mounting ambition and irreverent charm. A blaring ambition and persuasive ability that often caused a tendency in her to focus on story over fact, Annie’s wild imagination and idealistic pitching of her story being tumultuously staged here. The piece augmenting in this, a fantastic amount of depth, as it touches upon the parts of Annie’s life she’d perhaps rather leave hidden and not confront, such as her Latvian immigrant status and Jewish heritage, (particularly in a period rife with anti-Semitic tropes, Annie Kopchovsky being her real name). As well as illuminating on the heart-wrenching death of Annie’s younger brother Jacob and the leaving of her own children in order to cycle around the world. Doing much to paint and explain Annie’s motivations, financial or otherwise, whilst gravitationally demonstrating just how easy it is to manipulate a press story for widespread appeal.

As aforementioned the work is strikingly well-written; a salient narrative, delivered with an imaginative, comedically-rich and vivacious book, that is paired with 10 simply outstanding songs. Smith and Williams’ score being characterised by its harmonic intricacies and repetitive motifs, making it catchy, smart, euphonious and most importantly, entertaining. These are certainly two writers to watch out for. Likewise, Smith’s direction, with help from Associate Director & Dramaturg Adam Lenson, is dynamic and assured, doing much to perpetuate and bring to life the many facets of Annie, bringing in turn, a lot of colour to Martha’s character. A character that could quite easily have remained two dimensional as a subordinate to the dominance of Annie, exploited by her into the role of a storytelling tool. The storytelling, story within a story nature of the writing, is furthermore mirrored perfectly in the staging and minimal set, allowing for Annie and Martha to manipulate the elements of the office space, such as filling cabinets, a writing desk, documents, flowers, a hat and coat-stand and more, these becoming wonderfully suggestive of various characters and locations, desk chairs instantaneously becoming bicycles travelling the breadth of the earth at speed.

As far as performances go, Amy Parker’s Annie is suitably boisterous and tricky, as she must be in order to try and play in a man’s world. Yet, Parker is also subtly able to convey Annie’s inner turmoil, and thus the truth she is running away from. Parker’s performance is therefore, beautifully dynamic, her Annie remaining unequivocally layered, she is charming and tenacious, yet burdened and visibly desperate. Parker also displays incredible vocal tonality. Whilst Amelia Gabriel, the Martha to Parker’s Annie, complements her perfectly. Not only is Gabriel’s voice equally as stunning, her timid, yet reliable Martha bounces from fear to joy in an instant, Gabriel providing some seriously sensational characterisation. Her facial expressions and physical abilities are unparalleled, Gabriel truly capturing the dedicated and intelligent employee, looking for excitement and true appreciation, but too afraid to overstep her mark and lose it all. Both demonstrating just how malleable and dexterous they are as performers. Whilst the four piece band consisting of writers Jack Williams and Freya Smith, James Pugliese and Tim Harvey are wonderful performers, despite their size they do much to fill out the sound and play in a particularly stylised manner, providing a distinctive and eclectic sound.

Bottle Cap Theatre’s RIDE plays VAULT Festival until Sunday, click here to book now.

 

Annie (& Monticello/Yates): Amy Parker

Martha (& Yates/Celine/Fred): Amelia Gabriel

Book, Music and Lyrics: Freya Smith & Jack Williams

MD/Guitar: Jack Williams

Keys: Freya Smith

Bass: James Pugliese

Drums: Tim Harvey

Director: Freya Smith

Associate Director & Dramaturg: Adam Lenson

Movement Director: Alfred Taylor-Gaunt

Production Manager: Hannah Roza Fisher

Lighting Designer: Tim Kelly

Costume: Anna Smith

Associate Producer: Naomi Chapman

PR: Michael Bodansky

Review: Zoo, Cavern (Vault Festival 2020)

Martini Rating: 🍸🍸🍸🍸🍸

If you aren’t planning on catching Lily Bevan’s Zoo at VAULT Festival this week, what are you doing? Bevan’s smash-hit play is running until Sunday and is quite simply sensational. Full of depth, heart, intelligence and comedic wonderment, it’s a must see!

Having ran previously at Assembly in Edinburgh and Theatre 503 to great critical acclaim, Zoo has now been published by Nick Hern Books and is a bittersweet, tragicomedy about friendship, courage and flamingos. Set in both Miami and Yorkshire, the narrative harmonically follows two close female friends, Bonnie, who works at Cherokee Valley Zoo and Carol who devotes her time to bat conservation in the Yorkshire Dales, the pair, despite living thousands of miles apart, care greatly for each other. Making Zoo, a timeless story of love and friendship. We watch how they navigate their passion for animals, alongside the troublesome men prevalent in their lives. Animals proving to be much easier for them to cope with, an engaging counter-balance to their pair’s mild disdain for human connection.

Zoo therefore, eloquently traverses the female experience with immaculate wit and charm, meaningfully and affectingly touching upon strong topics such as domestic abuse, divorce, single parenthood and gender discrimination/misogyny. When a hurricane heads straight for Miami, Bonnie rushes to keep her animals safe. Across the world in Yorkshire, Carol feels the repercussions. From Carol’s pantomathic knowledge of bats and fear that cavers will disturb them, to Bonnie’s resistance in leaving her animals alone in the storm, Bevan dutifully captures absolute passion, love, loyalty, commitment and solicitude, as well as a creating dialogue about humanity’s relationship to the natural world. Demonstrating the lengths people will go to in order to save what they love and depicting how split-decisions in a crisis can shape one’s destiny. Meaning Zoo is not only a tender tale of sisterhood set to the back drop of animal facts and raucous comedy, but a turbulent play about change, both in the climate sense as the storms hit much harder than expected and in the female characters, Carol for instance is forced to find friendship in those around her and reform a relationship with her son, she is therefore, tentatively rejoining the human world with help from Bonnie. Opening up an intriguing discourse on purpose, legacy, spirituality and the concept of a life well lived.

However, Zoo has even more going for it than its clever, complex and hilarious writing. Bevan and Hamish MacDougall’s vibrant direction brings to life both Carol’s bountiful Yorkshire and Bonnie’s cherished Cherokee Valley Zoo. Bonnie therefore resides in Miami on the left, whilst Carol remains on the right in Yorkshire, the pair meeting in the middle when reminiscing about their first meeting at Chester Zoo or Carol’s recent trip to visit Bonnie. This physical representation of their locative distance being wonderfully envisioned by designer Erica Greenshields. Cherokee is brought to life by a neatly painted zoo sign and a series of cages moved around by Bonnie and to be used to safely house the animals, with precautionate sand bags surrounding the perimeter of the stage. Whilst Yorkshire is bare and less colourful, a reflection of the dark caves Carol spends her time studying bats in, the prevalent zoo sign later flipping to reveal a sign for Yorkshire instead, demonstrating the focus switching to Carol. Furthermore, the bench centre stage upon which we see Bonnie and Carol meet for the first time, is later and strikingly used by Carol alone, as she debates her next cause of action. Symbiotically, Tom Clutterbuck’s lighting and Mike Winship’s sound do much to artfully complement and embellish the locative nature of the work and its direction. Regarding performances, Bevan is a comedic tour de force, her Bonnie is impassioned, witty, instantaneously likeable and good-natured. Bevan is not only expressive and vivacious, her delivery is also smart and committed, Bevan knows exactly when to play to her audience. Whilst Lorna Beckett’s Carol is tough, determined and resilient, despite the harder, more reserved nature of the character, Beckett toys with the part and takes every opportunity for comedic relief, she like Bevan, is an effortless and smart storyteller.

To conclude, we cannot reccomend Zoo enough! CLICK HERE TO BOOK. Or HERE to buy a copy of the play text.

 

Performed by Lily Bevan (Bonnie Young) and Lorna Beckett (Carol Alsop)

Co-directed by Hamish MacDougall and Lily Bevan

Assistant Producer Alice Robinson

Production Assistant Sophia Tuffin

Designer Erica Greenshields

Sound Design by Mike Winship

Lighting Design by Tom Clutterbuck

Technical Stage Manager Eleanor Theodorou

Review: L I M B O, Cavern (Vault Festival 2020)

Martini Rating: 🍸🍸🍸🍸

Produced by Causas Comuns, Sara Carinhas directs an intimately human combination of stories, dextrously woven together. These searing, autobiographical snapshots are phenomenally set to music and dance for a transformative and theatrical affect.

Presenting a whimsical blur of narratives, the piece sensationally uses physical theatre moments and shadow work with transitions and songs, to play with the boundary between fiction and reality. Layering narrative upon narrative to provide an intelligible, provocative and bittersweet exegesis on the human experience. Touching on universal themes such as: love, friendship, ageing, solitude, existentialism, war, humanity vs nature, fascism, identity, immigration and more, L I M B O is a fast-paced piece of art bolstering a strong ensemble of international performers with excellent storytelling abilities, able to take us eerily from joy and hope to utter despair, in a single look or movement. Subtly referencing well-known Hollywood-ised stories such as Hans Christian Andersen’s The Red Shoes and L.Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the intended blur of fiction vs reality is truly threaded in. As the stories are remade by others and now them, Causas Comuns lead us to question do they still mean what they initially did?

As an internationally-focussed piece, the work also plays a lot with nationality and language. For instance, there is a beautiful section where Pierre Ensergueix euphorically talks about a childhood long ago in French, with Carinhas proceeding to translate it line by line into English. Whilst Filomena Cautela enchantingly flits through a series of different international accents with complete ease. The actors often reverting from English to (usually) their native language within sections of their storytelling, beautifully toying with the idea of universality, as, though there are parts the monolingual amongst us can’t necessarily understand, the emotion and sentiment shines through. Language being only one way to communicate. Hence the highly physical and musical nature of the piece.

As aforementioned the show also encapsulates some wonderful shadow work, providing phenomenal aesthetic intrigue and beauty, particularly from António Bollaño and Pierre Ensergueix, a testament to their physical performative abilities. Whilst Nádia Yracema is wonderfully endearing and expressive, her delivery is brimming with unadulterated clarity. Equally, Marco Nanetti is a powerful and succinct actor with a certain charm about him. Alongside them, Filomena Cautela, as aforementioned is fantastically malleable and articulate, demonstrating her boundless energy throughout. Finally Director and performer Sara Carinhas is suitably smart and quick-witted. Culminating in a clever, confounding and complex piece.

Catch  L I M B O today only at VAULT festival. Click here to book now.

 

Director: Sara Carinhas

Cast: António Bollaño, Filomena Cautela, Marco Nanetti, Nádia Yracema, Pierre Ensergueix, Sara Carinhas

Production: Causas Comuns

Review: Omelette, Cavern (Vault Festival)

Martini Rating: 🍸🍸🍸🍸

Omelette is a bizarre, yet absolutely charming love story full of wit and intelligence.

Set in a climate-conscious London, the piece follows Mia and Mo, who fall hard and fast for each other, after unexpectedly meeting in a shared Uber one night. The couple consolidate their affection for each other and hit the big milestones, whilst doing their bit for the planet. They attend all the marches, move in together, turn off the heating, stay indoors and even in a surreal twist of events, eat their goldfish, (waste not, want not). But as they begin to buckle under the pressure of neutralising their carbon footprint and the climate continues to collapse, their passionate love affair bitterly crumbles around them, much like the planet. Anna Spearpoint thus, writes a beautifully thematic love story, Mia and Mo’s all in, cult-like approach to becoming, in totality, eco-friendly, fantastically mirrors their intensely tempestuous relationship that seemingly forms over night. A wonderful examination of the prevalent extremism demonstrated by some climate activists, using the absurdity of the couple to subtly suggest that we don’t all have to be perfect all of the time to make a difference. Spearpoint phenomenally using the rise and fall of the relationship to highlight a hope that we can undo things, a hope that she breaks just as the relationship falls apart, demonstrating how futile individual efforts can seem, as well as the way in which this pressure to be perfect can affect everything, from relationships to how we act regarding climate change. The piece ultimately becoming a rallying cry to work together, to not necessarily be perfect, but to offset as much as we can, by planting trees for instance. Spearpoint’s writing is therefore hugely relevant and engaging, her comedic and emotional intelligence being wonderfully flexed here.

Tash Hyman’s direction is likewise, severely dexterous and does much to stage climate anxiety and the intensity of the aforementioned marches that the pair pledge to attend. Her decisions, mixed with Alice Boyd’s intricate Sound Design and Rajiv Pattani’s sharp, yet aesthetically stunning Lighting create an intense, fast-paced piece with swift and cutting scene changes that bring a certain riotous sense of anticipation and building pressure. Perfect for the climate anxiety the piece intends to convey. Whilst the circular nature of Seren Noel’s design, the audience sitting on all sides, not only hones in on this built-up, pressurised atmosphere, but cleverly engenders this sense of the couple going no where. Both figuratively and literally. As they take the decision to stay indoors in order to avoid doing anything to harm the environment, they remain on a circular disc centre stage, trapped. Their eco-efforts are the same, despite seemingly doing more, they are getting no where in terms of the bigger picture. Finally, a spiral at the centre of the disc they reside on, is revealed and this enacts the centre of their fixation on absurdly going to extremes to do everything they possibly can and therefore disregarding all rationality. Making Omelette a succinctly layered and intelligible piece. The couple’s movement around the disc combined with conversation, providing an exciting discourse on the Climate Action strikes, veganism, privilege when it comes to being able to afford to not work and go on the marches, love and more. Whilst Anna Spearpoint and Kwami Odoom’s performances are simply brilliant. They are both equally as vibrant, demonstrating themselves to be comedically smart and emotive actors. Their performances are a joy to watch.

Long Distance Theatre’s Omelette runs at VAULT festival until 23rd February, click here to book now.

Cast

Mia: Anna Spearpoint

Mo: Kwami Odoom

 

Creative Team

Writer: Anna Spearpoint

Director: Tash Hyman

Dramaturg: Tommo Fowler

Designer: Seren Noel

Sound Designer: Alice Boyd

Lighting Designer: Rajiv Pattani

Producer: Tom Bevan

Review: Coming Out Of My Cage (And I’ve Been Doing Just Fine), Pit (Vault Festival 2020)

Martini Rating: 🍸🍸🍸🍸

Is it possible to write an entire show about a single song? More specifically about a rock anthem? And more specifically than that, about Mr Brightside, The Killers biggest hit, so adored that it hasn’t left the UK charts in 16 years. Shepard Tone say unequivocally yes because that’s exactly what they’ve done, How did it end up like this? It was only a hit, it was only a hit.

Combining karaoke, clowning, projections, interviews, videos, live instruments, lip-syncing and more. Performers Tim and Hannah navigate the universality of a tune that became ‘the song’ of the noughties. Known for uniting people whether that be on a night out, in a pub, or beyond. Using unadulterated silliness, music and storytelling to truly connect with and unify their audience, Coming Out Of My Cage (And I’ve Been Doing Just Fine) is therefore, a damn good time and has a lot going for it. From the nostalgic factor, all but one person in the room knowing the song – connecting it to one memory or more and needing no coercion to sing it triumphantly, to the engendered, uniquely un-manipulatory audience participation promoting total investment. We laugh endlessly, we answer a call from Destiny, we help Tim and Hannah out of a literal cage, we close and open our eager eyes, we sing, we clap, we dance. It’s just fun! What more could you want from a night out?

Whilst the narrative is an episodic investigation into the song, traversing it’s history and the music video, to the subsequent memes, viral videos and tangible experiences that ensued. Sewn together by an overarching plot through which Tim and Hannah (and their audience), recreate a viral video filmed in an Irish bar, where the community are singing Mr Brightside for their recently departed friend. With one man enigmatically standing on the L-shaped bar as he and his friend used to. In each scene we learn more about, and are then reminded of the bar, crowded with people, all with drinks in-hand, singing this song for a lost friend, and are led to wonder who they are and if they all know each other… So not only is the piece a tender reimagining of a real instance, but a heartwarming reminder of genuine human connection. Much inline with the unifying nature of this show and the song that inspired it, the audience are brought together by the phenomenon that is Mr Brightside, like the people in the bar were brought together in their grief, symbiotically celebrating a life with this song. How’s that for universality?

In conjunction with this, is the main investigation. Beyond the facets of memes and viral videos, the duo are led to Rotherham, ‘the north’ of all places, in pursuit of a karaoke artist known as Brampton Flowers, who they’ve watched online. Of course, hilarity ensues as they try to infiltrate the community and their curiosity grows. Who is she, why does she always sing the same song and what inspires her to dress up week-on-week? The dazzling, (some would say), costumes wittily paying homage to her dressing up and the original music video itself, (yes there is a touch of apple throwing!) This, entwined with the Irish man’s wake, conducts a bitter-sweetness in the way a single song ties these incredible people and stories together.

The work is also particularly tech-heavy, though this can be clunky at times, the relatability of the projected ‘Vlog content’ from Rotherham, or displayed facebook conversations/stalking sessions and layers of endless memes are completely worth it. We are also total suckers for puns and you can be sure that this show contains plenty of cleverly-timed gags, the perfect homage to the meme-community spawned from Mr Brightside. Whilst the vastitude of instruments played remind us, not only of how talented the pair are – referring to the endless covers of the song that can be found online, but also of how this is a piece ultimately about music and that music has an unimaginably powerful way of bringing people together. In a show about unity, an EU flag fading into the distance didn’t go awry, making a sharp, fleeting and perhaps too soon jab at Brexit. Nonetheless, Coming Out Of My Cage (And I’ve Been Doing Just Fine) is a much needed antidote to the February Blues, (if that’s a thing, it’s a thing now!)

Click here to book your tickets and don’t forget to sing your heart out.

Review: Me Myself I, Pit (Vault Festival 2020)

Martini Rating: 🍸🍸🍸🍸

Carla Grauls’ Me Myself I is a striking and much-needed portrayal of humanity and it’s dulcet response to the climate crisis. Delving deep into the idea of legacy and the meaning of life, Grauls heartbreakingly captures the rate at which the planet is dying whilst humans keep on living, focussing more on legacy and online presence than the world they are actually in.

We meet Lana and Lena in a facility, where Lana, having chosen to replace herself before she dies, is having her clone Lena sign over her servitude for 100 years, should she even live that long, agreeing to taking on Lana’s identity in its entirety. The contract thus inciting Lena to adopt her life, relationship and digital presence, with guidelines explaining how to do so. But as we quickly see, the life that Lena inherits isn’t quite what she expected. The world is different to what she’s been told and the life, paper-thin, a loveless relationship with very little affection, a purposeless existence all riding on a falsified digital presence.

Going through several generations of clones, the work has a wonderfully artistic Samuel Beckett-esque monotony to it. As clone by clone goes by, the same single-perspective anecdotes being told to help the next understand who they are becoming, more birds die, forests burn, marshes swamp and houses are swallowed whole. Not only is the extent of the climate emergency therefore harshly constructed in front of us, humanity is congruently deconstructed, it’s loss of meaning, potent. With the clones almost willing the next to not sign the agreement and end the line. Humans become a mass of selfie-posting, idealism-lovers, obsessed with perfection, their image and their legacy, unable to authentically live and love and blind to their own destruction. Sound familiar? Lana’s decision to ‘go on living’ thus coming from a place of selfish vanity and insecurity, not wanting her boyfriend to find someone else, her privilege in full view as she mentions how she has paid for this service. The only ‘good’, preventative deed  regarding the climate emergency that she completes and explains to her clone, is the washing and recycling of plastics, an ironic drop in the ocean on the grand-scale of saving the planet. Grauls’ writing is therefore intelligible, reactive, sharp and clear in its call to action, whilst vibrant in its eloquence and poeticism.

Andrew Twyman’s direction vividly responds, taking Grauls’ stirring and bold lead. Twyman thematically chooses to stage the destruction, the action happening on a platform above dirt and bark mixed in with plastic waste, demonstrable of the human tendency to act above and oblivious to what surrounds them. Culminating in the actors throwing the bark and then examining the plastic, a visual depiction of how single use plastic is one of the things killing the planet. Whilst the square is plain and adorned with white furniture, a clinical man-made cell of privilege, it becomes dirty with the bark demonstrating the insistence that we cannot ignore what is happening forever. The dexterity of Twyman’s direction wonderfully enhancing Grauls’ wit and humour, intuitively referencing and enacting much of what is in the text. He cleverly brings to the forefront the clones becoming Lana, adopting and copying her nuances, inflections, gestures and poses, (for her all important selfies). Intricately physicalising the contract and the taking over of Lana’s life. Lana, Lena and co. are played fantastically by identical twins Leah and Mhairi Gayer. Both are perceptive performers, self-assured and filled with clarity. Locked into the action and utterly in sync, they resiliently blaze through the piece and it’s demanding pace. Pure excellence. 

Me Myself I, ultimately asks what’s the point in living forever in a world that won’t exist? Catch Me Myself I at Vault Festival on Sunday 9th February at 4:30pm and 7:30pm, click here to book now.

 

Written by Carla Grauls

Directed by Andrew Twyman

Produced and presented by Holly White

Actor – Leah Gayer

Actor – Mhairi Gayer

Casting Director – Belinda Norcliffe CDG

Review: Lily Bevan Character Monologues, The Gift Horse at The Horse and Stables (Vault Festival 2020)

Martini Rating: 🍸🍸🍸🍸🍸

Encapsulated within in Nick Hern Books’ recent publishing of Lily Bevan’s blistering new play Zoo, are her Twelve Comedy Monologues (and one for luck), a rib-tickling collective of very human, expertly written comedy, character monologues for women, some of which featured in the BBC Radio 4 series, Talking to Strangers (co-written with Sally Phillips). Performed here by Bevan herself, Anne Odeke, Pandora Colin, Hedydd Dylan and Charity Wakefield, the twelve-ish monologues are delivered vibrantly by this cast of 5 with extraordinary prowess and comedic supremacy.

The monologues include: an overzealous guest dressed as an ass at a Nativity-themed fancy dress party, a pirate enthusiast vying for a loan to make her pirate cafe dreams come true, a strident pupil touring parents around her school and unknowingly over-sharing her observations as she goes, a tattooist who can’t quite seem to grasp scale or the logistics of helicopters, a Tudor-enthusiast determined to give newly weds the most authentic feast at their reception whether legal or not, a paranoid walker afraid of a swan who is ‘acting suspiciously’, a drunk women in the bathroom of an opera house who, after seeing Carmen is deliberating whether to tell her boyfriend she has cheated, a Hampton Court Palace shop assistant unwittingly thrust into the role of Catherine of Aragon as everyone else has Norovirus, a nervous women who cannot seem to stop asking questions during a waxing session, a Bridesmaid staging a coup on the Best Man’s speech due to his prior examples of misogyny, a blogging allotment owner berating her neighbour’s use of untreated manure, a nervous and extremely rambled voicemail following up from a steamy sex session and more.

Part of the allure of this selection of misfits and their stories is the absurdly relatable nature of their predicaments. Each monologue proving to be wildly variegated, yet distinctly rich with just the right dose of comedy and character. Demonstrating how masterful at her craft Lily Bevan is. Grouping these women and championing their ‘longing and loss and sadness’. Bevan intuitively touches on themes such as passion, dreams, desire, divorce, innocence, allure, the female experience and expectations, love and much more. Her dry-wit and sharp humour taking the audience on a joyful and hilarious rollercoaster, pinned together by recurring scenes, (i.e Nativity), yet they indefinitely will work as stand-alone pieces and we can see actor’s in training  picking these up in the future. They are just that good, and are cleverly often addressed to a silent character, providing even more hilarity. Whilst the comedic intelligence of the 5 tasked with delivering these pieces is perfection, each putting their own stamp on their chosen monologues, conveying and embodying the vastitude of the characters and enthusiastically staging and physicalising their situations, despite the ephemeral nature of the performance. Hamish MacDougall’s direction is at play here, the monologues vibrantly lifting from the pages.

Lily Bevan’s Character Monologues are back on Sunday 9th February, click here to book now. Click here to buy a copy of Zoo, which includes the monologues and click here to book tickets for Zoo at Vault Festival.

Review: Over My Dad’s Body, Crescent (Vault Festival 2020)

Martini Rating: 🍸🍸🍸🍸

Simon David’s Over My Dad’s Body is a sharp-witted, satirical, and wonderfully self-aware one man show brimming with heart, charm and humour.

As an autobiographical review, the plot follows Simon as he recounts how he planned to write and perform a brand new, all-singing, all-dancing show, ‘Date Night!’, before his father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. And then, somewhat to Simon’s dismay, just as he decides to quit performing, his dad, writes, performs and films his own one-man show about his illness, mortality and legacy. So what starts out as a camp cabaret, spirals through to a hilarious, bitter-sweet, remembrance of Simon’s father who tragically died months after performing his show. And, as a result, it is also a cathartic elucidation on grief and the processing of it.

This show within a show about a show, is exceedingly intelligible, poking fun at it’s own ‘vapid, self-indulgent’ form and is intuitively directed by Chris Larner, the pace, wit and humour quite literally sparkling. Simon, composing his piece to be rife with jokes, ridiculous rhyming lyrics, innuendo and smut, cleverly still leaves room for the satirical nature to be contrasted by meaningful sentiment and charm. Whilst the combination of stand-up, film footage and original songs proves to be the winning formulae and great weight can be found in the scenes where, Simon delicately recounts hearing his father’s diagnosis from him and of his rushing home to Newcastle when things got worse, before heartbreakingly describing hearing his father’s breathing stop. Whilst the archive footage of his father’s show played at the point his death is described is brutal. The consequential manipulation of this footage, to engender Simon’s father still willing him on to perform is however an ingenious twist.

Furthermore, there’s a certain beautiful monotony in the train journeys Simon makes back and forth, recounting the stations, (or at least trying to). Not only does this convey what Simon’s anxiety was like, him trying to distract himself, unsure of what he was going to face when he got there, the final journey being made in silence, with Simon carrying a chair, a physicalisation of the weight of his grief. But also,  perhaps the monotony references his father’s diagnosis and treatment, as palliative care can be a repetition – arduous and seemingly pointless, the individual facing their own mortality, perhaps the journeys do much to signify this as well. Either way, Simon David’s piece is wonderfully multi-layered and complex. Simon‘s performance itself is also sensational, his comic-timing is exceedingly astute and his voice, sublime.

If you want to enjoy a show about ‘me, myself and Si’, complete with sparkly silver suit and black beret, a performance that will definitely leave you singing ‘I’m gay, I’m gay, I’m gay’, catch Over My Dad’s Body when it inevitably returns. Click here for Simon’s website to follow his future endeavours.

Review: The Journey of a Warlike Mind, Cage (Vault Festival 2020)

Martini Rating: 🍸🍸🍸🍸

The Journey of a Warlike Mind sees Ana Luiza Ulsig push the boundaries of artistic expression to deliver a vibrant, comedically-rich and affecting feminist exposé, that intimately delves into the inner workings of the mind, beautifully charting a journey of self-discovery and transformation from within.

Masterfully combining storytelling and dramatisation with movement, poeticism, dance, caricature and music, the work follows Eva on the most arduous journey of them all. Inside her own mind, as she finds the way to the bottom of her heart. Based on a true episode of a mental breakdown, which occurred during the impeachment process of Brazil’s first female president, Dilma Rouseff, in 2016, Ulsig playfully challenges her audience to decide which stories are her own and which are borrowed from friends, though all are irrevocably true and as result, remarkably affecting. This collection of narratives artfully weaves together, juxtaposing the abstract with realism and comedy with despair to form a bitter-sweet adventure through imagination, fantasy, mystery, laughter and tears. Resulting in a Herculean exegesis on the female experience and ingrained patriarchal structures, from our silence in the face of oppression and sexual abuse to our attitudes positive or negative towards men. Ultimately concurring that the change first comes from within, beginning with seeking your essential voice.

Ulsig thus dextrously displays the complexities of finding this essential voice, staging the inherent tension between the voices which inhabit our minds. Eva’s many selfs proving to be a battleground she must persist through however difficult or painful it is. An emotive and witty demonstration of the importance of our mental health and the healing process, with the ugliness of pain and scars of trauma being powerful contrasted against the the beauty of transformation and learning to love and feel again.

Ulsig is an enamouring writer and performer, there is true hope, beauty and poetry to her words and the performance of them. She is vibrant, sharp-witted and intelligible, using a plethora of representative costume and props to spin an exhilarating adventure, hurtling at 100 miles an hour, cleverly using movement, music and dance to balance, segment and emote. Her characterisation and ability to instantaneously embody the many facets of Eva’s imagination is wondrous, from an excitable little boy, to a tobacco-smoking, ‘outside-eye’ film director, her melancholic and frail heart, to the manly man she is in potentially in love with, to Shakespeare himself and more. Eva’s relationship with men, through these imagined male figures, is therefore broken down, does she hate men? And if so, why does she hate them? Thus cleverly capturing the conflict and resolution of our brains. We also hilariously see Eva wrestle with the idea of love, is she in love? Is marriage what she wants? Or is it because that’s what’s expect of her? Whilst we heartbreakingly see her come face-to-face with the repressed scarring of sexual abuse. An exquisite snapshot into the modern female experience. Ulsig also beautifully frames her work with the character of Rose, a seeming signifier of all the women who have gone before Eva and all the women that will come after her. The narrative begins with Rose rising from her tomb, from the dead, from the past. She alerts for an imminent war and Eva’s journey begins. At the end Rose fades, a memory.

If you want to witness Ulsig’s prepossessing art and skill, catch The Journey of a Warlike Mind today! Click here.

 

Written and performed by Ana Luiza Ulsig

African Dance Supervision: Joana Marinho (Brazil)

Costume Design: Camila Crus (Brazil)

Rehearsals / Sound collaboration: Mariana Santos Silva (Portugal/UK)

Performative writing collaboration: Joseph Dunne-Dowrie (UK)

Character development collaboration: Olavo Cavalheiro (Brazil)

Artistic and Graphic Design: Sofie Ulsig cargocollective.com/sofieart & Radoslav Nedyalkov radographic.com

Photos by Aidan Huxford

Review: The Wild Unfeeling World, Cavern (Vault Festival 2020)

Martini Rating: 🍸🍸🍸🍸

Casey Jay Andrews’ The Wild Unfeeling World is a crisp and relevant reimagining of Moby Dick, lyrically exploring a plethora of potent themes such as isolation, mental health and the quest for help. Andrews situating the tale in the not-so-distant past, her adaptation becoming a socially conscious story for the now, the ‘Wild Unfeeling World’ of today as it were. Perfectly capturing how easy it is to fall into solitude in the big smoke, especially when your world starts to crumble. The great whale Dylan is therefore, humanised, transformed into a modern, London women on the brink of self-destruction, having hit rock bottom and feeling utterly alone, she is frantically searching for a something, someone or somewhere to neutralise her self deprecation and a great journey of self discovery ensues. The narrative culminating with her finding affinity with a lost whale she discovers in the Thames, a beautifully tragic nod to the juvenile bottlenose whale who died of such a fate in January 2006. However, whale-lovers do not despair, as the tagline of the show warns, ‘expect whale facts’.

The most charming part about Andrews’ work is quite simply how much of an exquisite storyteller she is, projecting a certain warmth and clarity, revelling in the beautiful simplicity of her own work, breaking the fourth wall to juxtapose silliness against sincerity, surrealism against irrational hope. Ultimately presenting a suburban fable in which bad luck and questionable decisions can make or break you and there’s a fine line between the two. Andrews’ vision thus proves itself to be incredibly visceral and poetic and her narrative, charming and hugely moving. Whilst the writing is intelligible, factual and scientifically driven, the personable, charming nature of it balances and warms the heart.

As The Wild Unfeeling World is based on such a renowned piece of literature it is inevitable that Andrews references other great literary works and their authors such as J.M. Barrie and Peter Pan, mentioning Barrie’s theorising on desire paths and Kensington Gardens where it all began, Andrews hiding these gems like intoxicating secrets throughout. Another skilled element is the technical design of the piece, underscoring controlled by Andrews herself, dictates the atmosphere, conveys emotion, moves the plot along and sets the pace, wonderfully enhanced by some dexterous lighting. And when coupled with the directly addressed scientific musings on whales and the world, there is a slight National Theatre: A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time vibe to it. Clear, sharp and smart, yet relatable and poignant. The sound design is also aptly reflective of the ocean, the setting of the original fable, demonstrating the importance of water to the piece. For instance, Dylan remarks about how she finds tranquility in the Sea Life Centre marvelling at the underwater exhibits, she is also pursued down a body of water (the Thames) past famous war ships by Ahab, in this version, a ginger cat seeking revenge after being clipped by Dylan’s car (Moby Dick – A White Renault Clio), whilst Dylan as aforementioned comes face to face with a Whale in the river, wading in the water and frantically calling for help – symbiotic to her own need for help. In Ahab’s pursuit real water is chaotically utilised. We did say silliness counterbalances the meaning-making.

To conclude, if you want to witness water being thrown, cats seeking revenge and a women on the brink, encapsulated in skilled storytelling, catch The Wild Unfeeling World at Vault Festival this week. Click here to book.