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Degenerate Fox perform The Dirty Thirty, a compilation of thirty micro-plays, weekly at the Rosemary Branch Theatre. No two performances are ever the same, as this compilation is edited every single time, with five plays deemed the weakest, or those that have been running for too long, being removed and replaced every week, meaning that this theatre company dedicatedly refine and contemporise their art on a regular basis. This review will consider the performance of 7th March, a performance in honour of International Wom[x]n’s Day. The first thing I would note concerns the introduction to the performance and, more importantly, the explanation of the ‘rules’. Put simply, there are thirty micro-plays, each with its own title, and all numbered from one to thirty. The audience members call out the number they want, and the first and loudest takes presidency. One of thirty numbered pieces of paper is pulled down from a washing line strung high Downstage from wall to wall. Upon it is written the title of that micro-play, reminding the cast of which one to perform. The performers get ready, the title is “called”, and the micro-play we have all decided upon begins. Whilst I understand that the majority of audience members are regulars and would understand these [strangely named] ‘rules’, and whilst these rules are altogether plain and simple once understood, their explanation, voiced on this particular night by Aiden, is frustratingly void of detail and remains utterly confounding. Understanding this structure is crucial to the performance, and if, as they purport, The Degenerate Fox want to include the audience as much as possible and have them run the night, as it were, this format should definitely be far better elucidated. With the company doing this on a weekly basis, one would imagine that a quick and clear explanation of the performance’s format would be rather second nature to the performers. The second thing I would draw attention to concerns what happens before the performance. Before the audience enter, they are greeted by a blasé Jack sat behind a counter, asking each of them their name before writing another, completely different name upon a piece of paper, below ‘Hello, my name is…’. Not only does this feel rather bouncer-esque and somewhat overly formalised and confrontational, it again is very ill-communicated. One would imagine, in light of the performance’s homage, that these names are all in honour of female role models or influential women either forgotten in history or important to our society and its development [although, I was obviously not able to see if all of the names were names of women]. However, the significance of this is minimised, because it remains unmarked, unarticulated. It just seems as though an odd interaction with a quirky result. More importantly, this makes for another complication in respect to the neofuturist concerns which the company profess to have [more on this later]. The Degenerate Fox claim to be very much anti-illusion, encouraging their audience to be their true selves and professing to do the very same as well. To have very little eye contact from Jack and to have him ask our names, then simply ignore them and ascribe us completely new identity seems somewhat of a backtrack from this. Whilst audience engagement is encouraged, with performers requesting that members of the audience scream out the micro-play numbers, as detailed above, and whilst there is a professed absence of a fourth wall, full audience immersion, and a great sense of “community” amongst performers and spectators, there is very little opportunity for audience members to include themselves in the bustle and action, verbally or, indeed, physically. This is not an issue in itself but becomes problematic when acknowledging what the performers make their audience out to be compared to what the audience are actually permitted to be. Again, it also makes for a complication with the neofuturistic approach to theatremaking, which I shall now detail… From the very beginning, The Degenerate Fox performers declare themselves neo-futurists. It becomes clear as the performance unfurls that the company share their values with The New York Neo-Futurists, from general aesthetic and the notable use of the washing line to the manner in which they structure their performances, e.g. with the “menu” of plays — harking back to the dawn of futurist cooking — to working ethos. This ethos is one which demands that performers be authentically themselves and that the theatre they produce be non-illusory, i.e. their work should not make use of psychological realism or transport the audience to fictional wonderlands through plot and character but should, instead, be not merely a mirror to but a part of the real world, where actors are people and the theatre is…just that, a theatre. For the majority of the performance, this trajectory is achieved wonderfully. Right from the start, this concept of non-illusion is articulated distinctly through certain clear artistic decisions. First, we have Jack’s greeting, then we enter into a deliberately understated stage in which we catch the performers setting up in preparation for the performance, and, of course, there are the transitions between micro-plays during which we see performers race to ready themselves in the shortest of time for the next scenes, using the time to joke amongst themselves and with us. However, on that note, I should just mention that momentum is permitted to fall quite frequently during these transitions, with performers overusing the same jokes (such as Jack’s feeling hot under the polyester dress he is wearing) or, at times, not doing anything at all, remaining silent and distant. Nevertheless, these moments teem with personality and vigour, overall. Performers even make sure to promote their social media accounts to audience members, both to contextualise the play in the present day and to heighten the fact that these are real people before us who exist beyond the stage, not mere transient, fictional characters. So, who are these real people? And what are we presented of them? The performers in this company are all members of the queer/LGBT+ community. They hence possess very particular perspectives on and connections with gender, sexuality and its discourses, making them a perfect advocate for Women’s International Day, it would seem. And what a better way to start than with ‘Autoboobographies’, a most powerful, poignant and thought-provoking micro-play that presents sound clips of various women detailing their differing relationships to their breasts, before the only performer on stage, Lauren, makes a quirky yet significantly celebratory boob-print portrait that will hang on the back wall of the black box for the rest of the performance, all as chance would have it! The cast seem like the best advocates, then, yet the presented narratives on gender — at least, for this particular performance — remain highly rudimentary and uninformative, primarily focusing on Aiden’s self-identification as a woman…and…well, that’s pretty much it. “I can be a woman if I want” is really the extent of the narrative provided here, across all applicable micro-plays. The performers could do a lot more with the experience and knowledge they have, creating strong messages founded by the required intellect and understanding, to really celebrate and empower queer and LGBT+ people as distinctly needed and to educate the unenlightened. The material surrounding this is simply too shallow. Gender and sexuality aside, these performers are all wonderful, energised and vitalised performers, full of personality, drive and a palpable passion. I would just like to see a lot more from Aiden who remains a distinct anomaly in the group, dawdling aimlessly around the stage, competing fallibly with Sergio to call the scenes, failing to keep in time with [a very simple] rhythm in one particular micro-play, and appearing generally indecisive and unsure of herself. I should stress that the company possess a very significant and powerful initiative but that this is sometimes compromised by the fictional elements in certain scenes (my head goes to ‘How I Imagine Jack Has Felt…’ and ‘Charity Shop Chic’ as examples for this). Nevertheless, the initiative is, overall, well communicated and well executed. One important feature of this performance is its ability to take historical events, figures, contexts, etc. and demonstrate, on the whole, their relationship to and lasting effect upon the modern day (an example of this being ‘Lucy Locket…’). I shall finish by noting the tech-heaviness of this performance. Comprising an extreme amount of cues, presumably pre-organised in order to be picked at random, tech is operated with expert management. Graham is certainly very skilled. Yet, with tech manages to remain absolutely complementary and not too intense or overused. It is definitely most successful. Overall, this is an extremely promising performance, proving an incredible versatility, expressing very positive sociopolitical values and deriving from a highly intelligent and radical initiative. “A clever, politically-charged performance with a most unique premise, envisaging great social change.”

This review will consider V&V, written and directed by Misha Pinnington and currently performing at The Vaults Studio, London, as part of The VAULT Festival. I have mixed feelings about this performance, mainly because this performance itself offers two very different stories with their unique readings. Whilst both study the romantic correspondences between a pair of women, the two remain completely disparate narratives with completely different significances. One narrative [referred to below as the historical narrative] imagines the epistolary correspondences between Virginia Woolf (Heather Wilkins) and Vita Sackville-West (EM Williams); the other [referred to below as the modern narrative], the text-message communications between fictional characters Lottie (also Wilkins) and Mia (also Williams) via a modern dating app. The creators make rather retrospective and overanalytical comparisons between communications of romance in the 20th century and those of the modern world. Implied are the dissimilarities between the clarity, simplicity and heartfelt passion offered by traditional letter writing and the ambiguity, duplicity and bluntness of modern text talk. Whilst this is a clear and comprehensive trajectory, it is one utterly lost in the way it is explored through this performance. It is an aim which the play itself does not communicate, with the two stories seeming completely disconnected and unrelated, and with no extra measures beyond mere dialogue taken to convey message, purpose or meaning. There is a confusion between aim and inspiration, and this demonstrates itself in the material we are presented. With the aim so confused and ill-communicated, so is the reasoning behind placing the two narratives alongside one another. For a large number of reasons, only some of which I will detail in this review, the narratives remain very disparate, their relationship remaining confused and unclear. In this respect, overall reading is certainly skewed. The first reason these narratives remain so dissonant has to do with the extending significance of the characters. Lottie and Mia are fictional characters, imagined personae that echo the conceived average experience of communicators on modern dating apps; whereas, the characters of Virginia and Vita represent real-life people, de-contextualised historical figures of whom we have knowledge and understanding that pre-exist and transcend the dramatic text. Already, in the text’s most crude form, we have a friction in the conceptualisation of these characters and in their relatability and hence in their stories. As audiences, we are naturally drawn to the familiar, and in this instance, we are drawn to the figures of Virginia and Vita in this latter narrative and to the experience and context of dating apps in the former; our focus remains imbalanced in this way. In comparing the ways romance is expressed in the past vs in the present, it would make sense to depict either two real correspondences or two imagined ones that are, indeed, rooted in custom and social reality. To explore the romance conveyed in the historical correspondences between Woolf and Sackville-West through a made-up and fictitious romance and to weigh these against each other cannot make for a convincing, conclusive and accurate verdict. We learn nothing and explore nothing of this modern narrative if it comprises only ideas already in the heads of the creators’, without drawing from appropriate forms of evidence. In other words, there is no actual exploration occurring here; instead, a mere fiction is being devised to complement the pre-existing theorisations of the creators. This so-called “exploration” is thus flawed from the very beginning. I should also mention here that this fictionality makes it very difficult to digest the material at the very end of the play. Whilst the story of the modern couple ends in a mere breakup, the story of Virginia and Vita ends in a tragic and long-preempted suicide, intensified by its historicity. Suicide for one ending seems rather drastic and exaggerative compared to a mere sad breakup for the other, and this makes for a disequilibrium in the emotionality of the narratives. Very much related to this is the issue of context. We are presented with a very inconsistent sense of time and location. The time period within which Lottie and Mia’s story operates is marked quite distinctly, with contemporary language, the incorporation of technology (both the dating apps and the use of the projection screen, which I shall elaborate on later) and the exposure of current social values and customs, as outlined in the online articles and expressed through the characters’ inner dialogues — e.g. when characters worry about if they have left enough time before replying, in order to not appear desperate. However, what is there to mark the time period of this narrative, besides a few mentions of location and the figures of Woolf and Sackville-West? We are forced to rely on our own [perhaps incomplete or crude] knowledge of these persons and the time period they inhabited. With the times and their contexts being key to this play’s cross-case analysis, one would think that they would be much better elucidated, nay fundamental to both stories and their presentations and not just implied. Language, too, obviously plays a huge part in this disparity, one offering short and direct communication and the other offering loquacious prose. This difference of language is not so much a problem in itself, as it both distinguishes the narratives and reflects the times in question well, making for clarity and legibility, but the use of two very different languages, each with their own level of complexity of vocabulary, worsens the existing friction between the two narratives. Woolf and Sackville-West are not just generic letter-writers of the 20th century. Being poets, the language these women use retains a certain poeticism that stylises the dialogue in a way unequalled by the language used in Lottie and Mia’s communications which, conversely, do represent a generic modern speech. Not only does the modern narrative present us with modern text speech but also with the language of articles and with inner monologues which present inner speech as well as social speech in an unrestrained and fluid manner. Comparing the unique, particularised, poetic writings of Virginia and Vita against the more general, basilectal speech produced by Lottie and Mia compromises any accuracy or sincerity in conclusions about time-specific communications of romance. Movement plays an equally integral role. The movements for the historical couple are stylised, relational, robotic; for the modern couple, these are a lot more fluid and expansive, seeing the performers making real use of the stage’s geography, hiding behind the projection screen, sitting on chairs, lying on the floor. Again, movement styles do differentiate narratives well, but this differentiation enlarges what already seems like a great distance between the two narratives. Furthermore, towards the very end of the play, these movement styles seem to become unpronounced, blending into one another; it becomes rather unclear, particularly with Virginia and Vita’s writings seemingly losing their verbosity to some degree, as to which characters/stories are being portrayed. I must admit that this is a frequent issue in the latter half of the performance. And then there’s what I shall call the ‘dog sequence’ which demonstrates a completely different performance style of its own, seeing Williams on her knees and begging like a puppy and Wilkins controlling her actions with mystified, serpentine hand gestures. This dog sequence is really the only thing we are presented in the historical narrative that strays away from its unchanging articulation through dialogue and movement. The modern narrative, however, is articulated through many means: dialogue, exaggerative physicality, audience interaction, the use of the projection screen, the projections of text messages and the projections of text… The scene wherein the characters detail the “different types of sexting” sees Williams and Wilkins assume very different roles. They are no longer readably Lottie and Mia but are informants. The two perform beside one another, together, where they have remained up to this point distinctly separated and will continue to be so when this scene comes to a close. Elements like this which inform us of the social context surrounding the characters are not equated in the presentation of the historical narrative. The projections, of course, have a function of their own, providing a distinct visual language also unavailable to us with the historical couple. Yet, they also provide us with a non-human method of storytelling, being technical elements, where the historical narrative relies emphatically on the human voice and body for its telling. Here, we find a colossal stylistic incongruity. I should also take this opportunity to note the danger of projecting text which is intended to match character dialogue. If an actor makes but one mistake, mispronouncing or misreading their lines, this is immediately noted in the mind of the spectator, much like when reading subtitles on a TV that do not match the action. As this play went on, such errors became rather particular to the actors, primarily Wilkins. I would recommend line recall be tighter for this reason. Projections also became increasingly off-centre, and this made for a most unseemly effect during the aforementioned ‘types of sexting’ scene. There is no excuse for misplacing the screen, with white taping marking appropriate positions most conspicuously upon the floor. Projections also lag at times and pre-empt lines at others. I mentioned audience interaction as something which defamiliarises the narratives, and this is the final reason I shall give as to why the narratives remain so disparate. From very early on in the modern narrative, Wilkins and Williams — though, mainly Williams, which naturally causes us to give her more attention — interact directly with audience members, not only relaying to them directly the thoughts of their characters but requesting that they have an input in the play, singling them out as the objects of chat-up line practice, asking if phrases seem appropriate or too heavy. Where is this in the historical narrative? Are we to imagine that Virginia and Vita write their letters without hesitation or practice, without self-censorship and overanalysis? Where are the redrafts and discarded versions of the letters? Audience interaction is also used, less directly, in the overture which sees Wilkins sat upright in a chair Upstage Centre, glaring at us as we enter the house, her head tilting upwards, from left to right, as though looking down upon us. The overture communicates confrontation, connoting also superiority, dignity and pride. This has absolutely nothing to do with the story, or stories, that follow. It feels as though the vast majority of the decisions made in this performance are for temporary effect and do not consider what will be communicated overall when these decisions are lain side by side to be viewed as a complete entity –– a play. Most elements, on paper, seem promising and artistic decisions made for each narrative alone are rational, logical, sensible and clear, but what connects all of the material we are presented remains completely elusive and unarticulated. I think, for instance, that the modern narrative does exemplify well how dating apps have equated a sort of gaming culture, with prospective partners playing hard to get, as it were, limiting expressions of their personalities and assuming various personae to seem “cool”, “edgy” and “mysterious” and hence more appealing, more attractive. In this way, as self-contained pieces, these narratives are, for the most part, accessible and successful, but the significant elements which relate them with one another, those elements that compel the creators to present these narratives alongside one another, need to be better teased out and highlighted for us. As it stands, it feels as though we are watching two completely different plays, and with such stark differences in the imagination, dimensionality, energy and personality that births the narratives, our interest can only favour one narrative over the other. We are forced to see them as very separate entities, for the reasons I list above. I would urge Pinnington to reconsider how, for example, language, movement and technical elements [amongst others] can be used to pair and align the two narratives together rather than to differentiate them, and how this can complement or reinvent our reading of them. As for acting, Williams and Wilkins are rather good actresses, remaining, for the most part of the play, credible and energised. As Lottie and Mia, they are both hilarious and convincing, but I would recommend a brush-up on their portrayals of Virginia and Vita. It is clear, particularly with Williams, that the language offered in the historical narrative sits unnaturally and uncomfortably with these actresses. Credibility is lost to an awkward over-drama. I would just like to finish with a final note on lighting. Detectable even in the photographs above, the tones used in the lighting’s design are very simple and non-overbearing, being, of course, complementary with one another, yet they remain so deep, rich and dynamic. Design undoubtedly complements the performance as it is, but, again, the use of natural lighting vs these rich-coloured washes distinguishes the narratives at too great a cost. Nevertheless, a fine design. “An enjoyable performance but one which suffers from significant inarticulacy.” Photography Credit: Ali Wright.

Written by Anna Wheatley and directed by Jessica Daniels, Beige is a most heartwarming and cogent performance, representing the queer experience, for the most part, with clarity and precision. The play remains both emotional and encouraging, informative and entertaining. A good play, indeed. There do remain, however, many areas of this play that require further attention and refinement. One of these is the use of space and its significances. The stage is divided into three sections by white floor tape, the middle section being the widest and the main playing area. The significance of this is that the two sections on either side are designated “offstage” areas where offstage performers await their cues or interactions with the performers on stage, interactions such as handing over props. It is clear that there is a certain realism and defictionalisation that is desired here, and this is intensified with the direct audience addresses which occur from the very opening of the play throughout. When Ema Thane (playing Alex) enters the stage from within the audience, only to check, perhaps with no actual purpose, the technical equipment and set pieces dotted around the sides of the stage before interacting directly with audience members, Thane both defictionalises the space and makes for a relationship and engagement with spectators, meaning that the content we witness within this space will retain more poignancy, relatability and “realness”. However, this mode of performance is utterly compromised by the fictionality of the play. As soon as the music that is playing during the opening comes to a stop, Thane returns to the stage and portrays the character of Alex. The lighting (Hector Murray) changes completely, and direct audience address, one which solicits a vocal response, is no longer particular to the performance. The interactions that the offstage performers have with the onstage are just as fictional — drastically so, in fact — with one example being the pretence of inserting a CD into a player wherein an onstage performer simply hands over a CD retrieved from the other side of the stage, the second hand is placed over the CD as though the pickup of a record player, and music starts to play over the speakers. This is a most unseemly feature, especially when the CD or its case are dropped, as by Sukey Willis (playing Erin) on the night I saw the performance, and most inconsistent, given that Thane simply puts the CD in a box for the third and last time round, instead of in an offstage performer’s hand. With Jahvel Hall having a seat reserved for him in the front row of the audience, to sit beside an unsuspecting spectator, the title of ‘offstage’ is extremified but to no avail. So, there is a deliberate defictionalisation yet this is compromised by the use of what one might call Aristotelian Drama. This denotes that the performance is most unsure of its mode and style: is this a didactic, message-based piece of theatre, or is this simply a hedonistic one? These defictionalisations do not bode well at all with the most part of the play. This is of concern not only to mode and style but to the audience who will inevitably feel unaware of their role and function in a space which interchanges consistently from interactive and distant, and we find evidence of this in the so-called comedy scenes wherein Thane grabs a microphone and talks to the audience, just as in the opening of the play. Whilst this does gradually improves with each of these scenes, the audience are definitely more reticent, hesitant and resistive at first towards interaction. I would urge Magna to reconsider what this use of space and the boundaries offered or broken by this usage are communicating, what effect these have and if these effects are too disparate, as I believe they are. These are important considerations to be had. On to the writing’s content. This text provides us with a cogent argument for an increase in the understanding of non-binary gender identities, particularly in schools. We are reminded of the key challenges that queer persons face in day-to-day life, from which toilets they feel brave enough to tackle one day to the assault and hate incidents they will face during another. With items such as this former being implicit, evoked in a quick, passing transition, and others, like this latter, being crucial to plot, the content certainly covers a good amount of queer gender-related subjects in as much detail as it sees fit for each. Sexuality is also covered, albeit in less detail, bringing with it its own challenges in regards to relationships and the negative and punitive responses/perceptions that certain romantic partners may have when dating a queer person. Of particular importance in this text is the response of the long-term partner who witnesses the blossoming and the assumption of true identity of their queer other half over a long course of time, a development they might mistakenly deem as “attention-seeking”, “indecisive”, “confused” or “over the top”. These aforementioned comedy scenes, however, seem to retain less poignancy. Some notable and informative matters are definitely raised in these scenes, such as the discouraging inclusion of negatives in queer identity descriptors such as the ‘non-’ in ‘non-binary’ –– as Alex puts it, “No-one wants ‘non-’ in their identity” –– but the overall content of these scenes remains somewhat unnecessary and vapid. I find what I shall call the Interrogation scenes, where Alex is told to curtsy and bow, to be effective at first but rather bland in their repetition. When the “Interrogators” stray away from this formula and start to talk to Alex as though characters later on in the play, I find their significance to be far too esoteric and complicated. Most importantly, and most heartwarmingly, the play succeeds in presenting us with the perfect style of parenting for queer children. Alex's mother, Lila (Jordan Whyte), is completely unfazed by Alex's “unconventional” dress, behaviour and manner, nay she is militantly supportive of and defensive for these, standing up for her child against those who deem them too nonconformist, and excited for developments in their identity, such as getting a new partner. However, there is a drastic change of focus that compromises the content of this play, where Lila suddenly and erroneously becomes the main –– if not only –– focal point of the story. We end with a letter from Lila, one in which she playfully recounts the embarrassing experience of getting locked outside of the house, naked and needing to get to work. Until the end, all information presented about Lila has been presented solely to progress Alex’s story. Everything from her divorce with Alex’s father to her therapy dancing is all intended to inform us of Alex’s character or situation or to help the character of Alex themselves. Her death thus seems far too extreme a change in focus, unrelated to the content we are shown hitherto. This performance is the perfect context to voice profound discourses surrounding gender and sexuality and queerness. Whist a good amount of ground is covered, there is so much more that this performance could touch upon. This performance does touch upon the aspect of inexpressibility of gender that so many queer persons experience, the unavailability or incomplete nature of words to describe gender identity and the resulting feelings of [the displeasingly named] gender dysphoria; however, its manner of doing so is most repetitive and simplistic and hence remains uninformative. When asked why they feels this way, particularly by the Interrogators, Alex becomes distressed and speechless, caving in on themselves frustratedly; it would be beneficial for us as audience members to see Alex overcome this difficulty and find an appropriate and all-encompassing way to express themselves. Furthermore, the queer experience is notably subjective, and I would like to see this stressed more in this performance, to have a more particularised representation beyond the standard and generic. As for the writing itself, the register of language used is, at first, rather unstable, seeing dialogue between Alex and Lila, in particular, incorporating overly descriptive vocabulary. The overall language of the text later becomes much more naturalistic and stomachable. This imbalance is something I would be aware of, editing the script to make for a more fluid and consistent register throughout the text. Acting is very good in this performance, though I would have liked to have seen a lot more vigour and credibility in Hall’s characterisation of Dean and more transformativity when performers multi-role or when Alex is portrayed at different ages. There is an undeniable onstage chemistry between Thane and Whyte, and this certainly works in the play’s favour. The cast remain enjoyable and convincing, and the material that Thane has prepared for moments of audience interaction is also very promising, minimising any tension that could occur. The success of the set (designed by Ica Niemz) is somewhat questionable, as alluded to above, in both its aesthetic and function, and there is a definite overuse of props which frequently prove themselves to be problematic and unmanageable. However, I must say that this set’s organisation makes for very seamless and slick transitions, and the plastic pipe structure proves itself to be a most versatile and imaginative set piece. Lighting aids the performance well, separating scenes smoothly and providing atmosphere and dimension. Costume (also designed by Niemz) is equally appropriate, yet the attire chosen for the teachers, played by Hall and Willis, are most strange, indeed. “A compelling and emotional performance but one in need of a certain tidying.”

The Refuge provides its audience with an intriguing gothic tale of mystery, love, betrayal and murder. Its potential certainly remains very promising, but there are many refinements that need to be made in order to make this performance richer and more compelling. I shall start with plot. There is a huge inconsistency in the focus of this text. Clare’s (Sheena May) relationship with Paul (Jason Denyer) and Paul’s affair with Emma (Catherine Allison) remain the focal points of the plot throughout, yet this is complicated by the over-inclusion of other content. There is simply too much material aiming to be crammed into a single one-hour performance, and this means that material remains rushed, impetuous, unfinalised and open-ended, overall, and that these original focal points lose their credibility and significance. Both story and narrative become convoluted and unfocused in this way. One predominant reason for this confusion of content is the inclusion of gothic material. At first, gothic elements are simply stylistic, contextualising and informing both the material and our readings of it: bad weather conditions; eerie, secluded and treacherous geographies; etc. However, once Clare sets foot in the hotel, these elements become less evocative and stylistic, and more integral to the story. We find that the hotel is haunted, and Clare is repeatedly teased by the presence of spirits, the sound of their scratchings and the tellings of their hauntings. I imagine that this theme of haunting is to demonstrate that Clare is still haunted by her reckless, murderous actions of the past, but, if this is, indeed, the case, this is most inarticulate, as it is not Clare that is haunted, per se, but, rather, the hotel itself. The fact that the hotel is haunted is something oft-repeated amongst the characters and implied most notably by Emma who remembers ghost-hunting guests who once came to stay, readily equipped to set up cameras around the building. In this way, the haunting remains unparticularised, generic, unspecific to Clare and her situation or past. In other words, the haunted hotel is simply another [irrelevant] feature of the text, a simple eerie location to house the more important action. Yet, this is complicated when the scratching that Clare has been hearing [for an unreasonable and unrealistic period of time for such a short message] is revealed upon a slate in the corner of a room to be the sound of a message being written, supposedly by the haunting spirit: ‘GET OUT’. This theme of haunting loses its title as a mere ‘theme’, and haunting becomes a concrete and unignorable event in the story. Then, a real ghost, an apparition of Tom’s brother (Peter Jeffries), is revealed — another event, only, this time, one which brings us to the end of the narrative, one which has a palpable impact on the story, jerking Clare’s memory of her reckless driving, and closing the play. Yet, what relationship does Tom’s brother’s ghost have to the spirit which haunts the hotel? To our knowledge: none. It is a mistake to think that the trivial and negligible theme of ghost hauntings specific to the setting of the hotel contextualises this final apparition which will have such a decisive role in the story; the two are completely unrelated beyond mere motif. And this is without mentioning how awkward and unimpressive this apparition scene is, with Jeffries simply standing still in Tom’s brother’s red shirt, his hair across his face. More imagination is necessary here. Beyond the doubtful inclusion of ghosts, we are left with an array of unclosed material, of questions that are not born out of intrigue and suspense but out of incompletion or inconsistency of plot: Why did Emma switch to helping Clare after agreeing to murder her? Her reasoning, that she did not know what Paul was capable of, seems unrealistic considering that she knew Paul had murdered Emma’s father. And why did he kill her father in the first place? Why is the hotel haunted and by whom? This, one would imagine, would be of particular importance to divulge. What is the significance of the photo album that Molly shows Clare, and of the people in these photographs? This seems completely unnecessary, a most unprogressive, needless and, frankly, boring scene. Had Clare passed the café before or not? It remains both ill-communicated and unlikely that Clare would have been to the town before, given that there is nothing there for her. What is the money that Paul has been swindling Clare even for? Perhaps these all have profound and detailed answers in the creators’ minds, but to an audience, these items together simply seem highly convoluted and far-fetched, unsubstantiated and rash. The question remains: is this a ghost story or a story about heartbreak, deception and murder? Again, the focal points throughout this play remain the relationship and the affair, meaning that the ending leaves us with a great sense of dissatisfaction. These focal points are simply discarded for the solving of a murder in which we have rather little interest. Emma is just left behind at the hotel; Paul is dead; and Emma is a murderer… It seems as though this longevitous buildup of deceit, betrayal, lust and love is compromised by these hasty events, as though a certain shock factor was wrongly favoured in lieu of coherency and continuity. To end with exposing Clare as Tom’s brother’s murderer signifies that we are desired to think of this murder as the crux of the story. Then, why does this feature so little in the plot? The various, disparate materials which constitute this text make for a very confused reading, but that is not to say that they are all terrible in themselves. The ideas are there, however unpolished they are, and definitely have the potential to combine well. For this reason, I would urge a complete reworking and fine-tuning of the text, making sure that all of the elements presented function alongside one another, that all scenes and characters have relevance and significance, that nothing is discardable or negligible. I would also recommend extending this play so as to allow the various materials to breathe and mature, to give them enough time to take their full effect; or, I would recommend deleting features completely, acknowledging that these will not work in tandem with one another without clever and in-depth revision. The acting in this performance, I am afraid, ranges from mediocre to good, with Jeffries and Eliza McClelland remaining the most convincing and invigorated performers. I must say that I was particularly disappointed with Denyer who remains utterly unconvincing and unenergised. Once he is exposed as a cheat, Paul’s insincerity should be stressed not only through our understanding of events but through Denyer’s portrayal of him. We should be able to read deceit and manipulativeness in Denyer’s speech and gestures; instead, he remains just as wooden and ungiving as before. This problem is shared with Allison when her character, Emma, suddenly and unpersuasively changes sides to help Clare escape. The lack of energy, of desperation, makes the sudden switch seem unconvincing; in fact, it makes it seem as though part of a plan, a trap, and when this proves not to be the case, the effect is most underwhelming. There is a certain stasis in performativity amongst the majority of the cast, a lack of vigour, zest and passion. It is the text that does most of the work for these, dare I say, rather lifeless actors. Beyond physicality, there is the lack of naturalism in the delivery of lines as well as the stumbling over lines which occurs just enough times to be noticeable and irksome. Notably, all of this is not just a histrionic issue but one editorial (writing by Lynne O'Sullivan) and directorial (Gigi Robarts as director) as well. There should never, unless deliberate, be an extensive amount of stillness or calmness in a play, and this text and its direction make for a particularly fixed and unvarying setup. As for technical components, I must note that sound is particularly awful. It remains far too synthesised and loud, not to mention limited to only one side of the stage, and this is most subtractive. I mentioned earlier that the time given to the sound of the spirit’s scratching is unreasonable considering the short message produced, and sound plays a huge role in this, with the scratching being noticeably fast. Surely, the message, completed with such speedy ease, would be finished in no time. This is a good representation for the lack of realism in sound. Music, however, complemented transitions and faded appropriately. I would have liked the lighting to have gone easier on the blackouts, but I note that this is somewhat due to the lack of imagination in the writing, with power cuts being an overused item. “A passable piece of theatre relying far too heavily on shock and pre-existing style and motif.”

Written by Robert Holtom, directed by Tom Wright and performed at the Network Theatre, Dumbledore Is So Gay is most definitely an enjoyable play, but there remain some key areas that need to be reworked. My first issue with the text is its lack of incorporation of Harry Potter (HP) material. One would imagine, especially with the name of a key character of the series, Albus Dumbledore, making its way into the very title of the play, that HP-related material would be a hallmark of and inseparable from this performance; this is, most strangely, not the case. Whilst references are made semi-consistently to HP characters, the Wizarding World and the overall franchise, there is very little to truly concretise these as crucial to the narrative. However, when least expected, Rowling’s idea of the Time Turner suddenly becomes a key storytelling tool to recall/rework plot, and we find the franchise playing a crucial role in constituting the play’s structure and events. Yet, once the Time Turner has done its part, HP takes a backseat once again… This imbalance of HP-related material and non-HP-related material makes for a peculiar and unstable reading of the text. HP-related content is not worked into the text in such a way that it complements or progresses narrative and plot but, instead, is used on the sideline for comedic effect, and this is most unseemly. I would recommend either working this better into this text or scrapping it completely. To replace the Time Turner with a simple "If only I could do it all over again" would have the exact same outcome here; nothing would be affected, and this is definitely an issue. The story should function in such a way where it would not be able to progress without these items. Jack’s (Alex Britt) being a Hufflepuff is something I find to have promise, however. Within the HP fandom, being a Hufflepuff is a rather plain and second-rate ascribable identity, remaining stigmatised and oft-denigrated, and it is something that Jack initially presents himself as awkward about, shy of, ashamed of, etc. Yet, by the end of the play, he is assuming his identity as a Hufflepuff boldly and proudly, despite its connotations amongst other HP fans, and this serves as a good pop culture analogy for people assuming their identities as homosexual or queer, one which promotes self-empowerment despite social prejudices seemingly out of one’s control. This is definitely a feature of this performance but still remains a very minor item. I think this play would benefit, if it were to continue to promote reliance upon these HP references, from utilising more features like this and concretising them as vital aspects/messages of the text. The same can be said of Jack’s focus on Dumbledore as the only gay character who then also ends up dead, an example of lack of representation in mainstream entertainment. This is something touched upon by the text but made to be fleeting, insignificant. On to acting. The actors are each very engaging and perform with high energy and vigour, yet there are still other, more basic practices that they need to be conscious to implement, such as holding for audience laughter –– a notable and recurrent issue –– or coming out of character to smile or laugh to themselves, this latter being most particular to Britt. Charlotte Dowding (playing Gemma and others) definitely proves herself to be quite a versatile actress, assuming her various roles with refinement and articulacy, and I particularly favour –– as did the majority of audience members, so it seemed –– the scene wherein she plays both Gemma and Jack’s mother at the same time. This play certainly allows for a humorous self-referentiality where multi-roling is concerned, drawing deliberate metatheatrical attention to the technique, and this is most fruitful and comedic. On the other hand, Max Percy (playing Olly and others) struggles at times with his transformativity, his characterisations sometimes blending into one another, but when his characters are more refined, they are most certainly credible and absorbing. Britt remains consistently engaging and endearing throughout but could benefit from slightly more zest and emotional specificity in places. I would like to have seen more emotion from the actors who present very caricaturised characters, making the more serious scenes, and their severity, awkward or difficult to read. However, this is just as much an editorial/directorial issue, with comedy and fast pace being fundamental to the dramatic text, and with serious and hard-hitting content such as suicide or vitriolage being [sometimes improperly] skimmed over. On the topic of writing, I will note that I was most pleased that there were variations with each repetition of the story, besides the radical changes in plot. However, it irks me –– once again –– that homosexuality and its resulting experiences are synonymous with suffering, pain and shame and the overcoming of these. Whilst there are certainly very heartwarming moments in this play, particularly where shame and prejudices are rejected, there remains a sense of bleakness. The focus on shame becomes rather condemning at times, particularly through the representation of lascivious behaviour, and content remains somewhat unoriginal and unimaginative, despite its seemingly unique premise. However, comedy is certainly the strongpoint of this text, both in the traditional sense, which provides us with a sense of resolution and catharsis, and in relation to wit and humour. This is certainly an uplifting play, overall, especially with its loveable, if rather unexceptional and caricatured, characters. As for the aesthetics, the wooden block stools and bench make for a clean, versatile and dimensional playing area, yet I find the metal netting to be a strange aesthetic decision. As for lighting (designed by Rory Heaton), there remain far too many cues, making for complicated visuals which oftentimes drown the stage with one coloured wash after another. A most rudimentary design. “A good performance but in need of some rethinking and realignment in both structure and content.”

Unfortunately, I must start by saying that this is not a strong performance at all. It remains convoluted, chaotic and disorderly, sometimes involuntarily and sometimes through peculiar volition. As the audience enter, they are playfully accosted by an accordionist, the ushers and three babbling scientists, one (Will Stevens) obsessed with his complex machines (two bicycles with one wheel suspended which, when ridden, supposedly powers the fluorescent lights around the stage); another (Stephanie Ocampo) intrusive, ecstatic to welcome us in and see us to our seats; and the last (Antonia Strafford-Taylor)… well, I’m not too sure what function this last scientist has. Whilst the first two performers caricaturise their scientists through clear profiles and idiosyncrasies, resulting in coherent and tailored interactions both with audience members and amongst themselves, Strattford-Taylor remains unparticularised and undefined. Her movements are unexaggerated and rather natural in comparison to the other performers, and this is definitely a problem. However, I must admit that this needed erraticism does certainly — if rather too gradually — get stronger as the play goes on and as the scientists reappear sporadically throughout. These three performers will be our three guides through the text, multi-roling as Coco (Strattford-Taylor) and her friends. As these characters, the actors are all rather good, but, as the play progresses, the problem becomes less about performer transformativity and believability and more about the strength of material itself. To an extent, I feel somewhat unworthy to comment on the dramatic text and its soundness because of one particular issue persisting irksomely throughout the performance’s entirety: inaudibility. Pigfoot Theatre clearly did not consider carefully enough the nature of the space the play is staged in, with The Pit theatre being particularly echoic, and with no counteractions put in place for this. A mixture of issues with over-/projection of voice and lack of technical or architectural aid, volume becomes an issue inherent to this particular staging of this text. For the most part of the play, I could not understand a single thing due to the performers being completely inaudible, their words blending indistinguishably into one another, something commented upon by many other audience members too. So, perhaps I missed some vital informations that would have bettered my understanding of the play and that would have made it more favourable in my eyes, but I remain rather unconvinced. The various materials presented, such as software hacking, environmentalism and advancements in science, are left so disparate and unmarried that only over-analysis could produce intelligent connections between them. I think that Pigfoot Theatre is aware of this, considering the scientists’ insistence upon concretising magical realism as fundamental in this play’s story and its telling. In my opinion, this magical realism can undoubtedly be equated here to but a lack of both creativity and the know-how to create a coherent, articulate and legible piece of theatre. That is not to say that there is no poignancy to be found in this text whatsoever, however. There are certain, very intelligent discourses evoked by this play. One example of such is the notion of data and its seeming as though a viable sustainable, immaterial and infinite resource, where, indeed, there exist data centres that rely on very physical and material machines and sites to store data and process its production and sharing. This, the play exposes, remains just as — if not more — destructive of our environment than other non-digital means… But what does this have to do with saving a polar bear from…Scotland? I imagine that the scientists’ faulty experiments, the breaching of their security systems and their reliance on magical realism, together with environmental/Anthropocenic concerns, is to suggest that science is unworthy to deal with the colossal and unwieldy environmental crisis in the midst of which we find ourselves today…but this is just a mere prediction from what I could gather from the text; the true aim/message/premise of this play remains utterly vague and unclear. One fundamental characteristic of this play is audience participation, something I find to be appropriately consistent yet of little necessity. There is a certain degree of physical exertion required of the audience, from letter-writing to bike riding, to holding tarpaulin high above the head, and all is to little avail. When the audience first enter, they are asked to write down the one thing that they would save if the world was ending tomorrow, and at the end of the performance, the performers run around, asking what each audience member wrote… Why? I have no idea, but I imagine we are supposed to be conscious by that point of a certain conservationist concern that would inspire our choices, which we definitely are not. In fact, because we are told to write this item down at the very beginning of the performance, one finds that the majority of audience members have said things like "My son" or "My wife", which prolongs a certain human focus which I would imagine is not desired of this ending. We wait so long, left for the entire performance to ponder what this letter could be for, and all we do is tell it to the performer, and it is immediately forgotten. Such insignificant and, again, utterly unnecessary moments like this should be completely omitted. Most moments of participation are, in themselves, escapist or rather humorous, yes, but have incredibly little bearing on the story. In fact, this is very typical of this performance which consistently presents us with quirks and oddities, such as the light-powering bicycle, musical numbers and puppetry, items which do not strengthen our understanding of anything and which, frankly, do not have very sufficient hedonistic value, either. In fact, I find the use of the bicycle to be particularly perplexing. Whilst I understand this to be Pigfoot Theatre’s conscious effort to produce a piece of theatre that is totally carbon neutral, I think the significance of this transcends the performance itself; in other words, this is something unreadable by and unimportant to the audience of this play, something evidently integral to the company’s dispositions and predilections but not of use or benefit to this performance. I should note here, however, that these musical numbers (music by Sarah Spencer) that I mention above are very endearing and professionally composed, but nevertheless, they are rather stylistically questionable, especially considering the vast absence of songs for the first half of the performance. These songs are responsible for generating the greatest sense of endearment of the characters, and one of the few things that makes this play watchable is this. The use of the accordion I find, again, to be an issue. It serves such little purpose and only adds greater confusion where style is concerned, however charming and clever, when isolated, certain of its usages are, such as its use in what I shall call ‘the breathing scene’ where no notes are played, just the sound of air as the accordion is expanded and decreased. As for lighting, the simple rods lined with LED strips are definitely very pretty despite their simplicity, and they aid imagination well, particularly in that aforementioned scene involving the data centre. Again, I find the main fluorescent lighting to be less impressive and most subtractive from content and over-intellectualised. In all, this is a most bemusing and disorderly performance. I must admit that until very late into the play, all I could observe from around the room were grimaces, scorns and expressions of utter confoundedness. It is rare to find such an audience where one can, without a single doubt, declare the response of the entirety of the audience. It was clear that I was not the only one bewildered or frustrated. Any palpable trajectories of this play are completely lost to its outlandish happenings, to its irresolute characters and erratic displays which all together remain incoherent and incohesive. There are deliberate ecological motives behind this so-called ‘climate-change musical comedy’, from the use of solar power and totally recycled/-able set to the promotion of environmentalist rallies at the close of the play, and yet any underlying message, beyond a simple “huge environmental issues exist”, remains completely undelivered. Whilst actors are energised throughout, the material itself is just simply lacklustre. Again, perhaps my mind would be radically altered if it were not for the sheer multitude of inaudible scenes, but something rather compels me to doubt so. “A highly inarticulate, unintelligent and questionable piece of theatre.”

For clarity: in this review, Arnstein refers to Katie Arnstein as an artist, and Katie to the persona she assumes on stage. In this review: Summary: It's a Girl! Bicycles and Fish Sexy Lamp Sticky Door It's a Girl! A trilogy by Katie Arnstein This review will consider the three plays, Bicycles and Fish, Sexy Lamp and Sticky Door, which constitute the It’s a Girl! trilogy currently performing at The Vaults Theatre as part of The Vaults Festival. All three are interrelated one-woman shows written and performed by Katie Arnstein, presenting a very clear and cogent, if somewhat specific, argument for modern feminism. The trilogy depicts the ordinary and normalised sexist treatment of women today and the expectations placed upon women both in everyday life, whether social or professional. Whilst Arnstein’s content is heavy and raw, and whilst the sociopolitical undertone of these plays is serious and harrowing, the trilogy remains lighthearted and engaging. Comedy is used articulately throughout these works not as something to negate or discredit the social realities of women presented but to ease the audience into them, to critique and challenge them in an uninvasive manner. It is when we feel most at ease, most intrigued and wrapped up in Arnstein’s material that we find the entrails of misogyny, sexism and sexual violence and prejudices. The overall content of the trilogy is quite extensive, ranging from particularised focus on the sexual objectification within the arts, of actresses in auditions, to a more generalised focus on everyday sexism, either confined to dialogues within friendship groups or amongst colleagues, or outreaching acceptedly into the public sphere. Although the texts of these plays allude to certain aspects and contents of one another, they could largely be seen as distinct and separate plays. I will say, however, that Bicycles and Fish would stand out to me as the only one of these three plays whose content would seem too disparate, incomplete and introductory if it were to be staged as a stand-alone play, for reasons I shall elaborate upon later. Furthermore, even though there are definite similarities between these plays, with structure, style and technique being virtually identical, the coverage and content each of them provides are most unique and varied from play to play. I would like to see even more of an interrelationship between these plays, however, if they are truly to qualify as a trilogy. A few reappearances of characters and allusions to content discussed elsewhere is not sufficient to contextualise these plays alongside one another, nor is the mere theme of feminism. As Sticky Door emphasises, this trilogy should not be seen as a product of message-based theatre. Instead, the trilogy devises a safe space for the exploration of feminist concerns. It is a type of therapy, both for Katie and for those audience members who have unfortunately experienced the same, common injustices. With direct audience address, website links, catchy slogans repeated in collective chant (such as ‘Time’s up’), frequent cultural references and simply Katie’s overall manner of delivering the material, a definitive sense of communality and community is produced. There is a certain emotional response to this work evidenced by the roaring full-house ovations each of Arnstein’s works receives. In this way, the trilogy is required socially; it is cathartic, replenishing and, above all, encouraging. This being said, I am not sure that communal therapy is the principal intention of this trilogy but, rather, a by-product, especially in regards to the first two plays in the series. The overall focus does, unfortunately, remain rather inconstant and throughout, making for an inconsistent rhetoric. This friction is located in many aspects of the work, such as in the subjectivity vs the applicability of the content, in the triviality vs the congruity of certain material, or in the didactic vs the expressionist modes this performance alternates between, and so on. The friction here lies in the structure of each play that initially present themselves as didactic expressions of feminist concerns, as articulations of the social realities of women, intending, supposedly, to divulge these to an unknowing public; we are provided with quotes, speeches, rhetorics and thinkings, all intending to demonstrate the ubiquity and danger of sexism and, with references to President Donald Trump, how this is accepted nay encouraged systemically, but, most importantly, to educate audience members. Yet, the content that follows is otherwise story-based and hence fictitious and histrionic but also self-contained and simply expository, undemanding and unchallenging. What starts off as a direct challenge to our culture and politics ends up as storytelling and catharsis. Both are equally valid modes of theatre, but one certainly compromises the other in this trilogy. As indicative of a lot of postmodernist theatre, there are the classic Brechtian influences: placards, estranging musical numbers, episode titles, and a presentation of the self as actor playing character. These are used to engender more of a comedic effect as opposed to anything didactic or confrontational, and whilst this is a misuse of the technique, for escapist dramatic effect, this nevertheless adds character and quirk to the performance; it just means that some features, such as the episode titles, are used superfluously and to little benefit. In other words, Katie appropriates the techniques to her advantage, but sometimes they are rather overused. The ukulele songs, however, I think are a perfectly articulate and vastly endearing feature, helping to maintain that lightheartedness that characterises this performance and which this performance definitely requires. Overall, a touching and empowering trilogy that depicts aspects of the female struggle with clarity and precision. Whilst all plays have their own unique trajectories, all together, these plays provide their audiences with detailed and manifold content. I would just be wary of the disparity between the first play and its two descendants. “An intelligent, compelling and thought-provoking trilogy, presenting heavy content in a digestible nay flavoursome way.” Bicycles and Fish I find the content of this play to be particularly inarticulate and incomplete in relation to the other two of the trilogy. I imagine this is because it was the first play to be written, before a trilogy was even on Arnstein’s mind, and so there was little thought as to what would be communicated overall in the plays’ combination. This is an issue with an easy solution, however: editing. There is definitely a rockiness to this play, accentuated in the overuse of placards and in excessive movement. Sometimes, Katie seems to be all over the place, covering every section of the stage and titling every location with a placard. With the placard comes the written text, then there are the songs, the seated storytelling, the re-enactments; there are simply too many techniques used in too quick a succession. Bicycles and Fish starts with a rather hesitant definition of feminism and its applications from an overly PC Katie. This is actually rather clever, as, by doing so, Katie closes herself off to hyper-criticisms by getting there first, so to speak, but also clears her text of any over-intellectualisations or wildly extensive discourses, reminding us of the fundamental core of feminism, and this acts as a precursive lens through which we are to view the rest of the performance. However, the content slightly loses its way when it teeters towards childhood sweetheart Danny or crippling cystitis, and too much time and information starts to be given to and about rather trivial or negligible items like these. Whilst this does allow us to develop a greater sense of Katie’s identity, this could be achieved through far fewer details, not to mention that this sense of her identity is completely obliterated if spectators only watch one of these plays and not the full trilogy, in which case they would have to start all over again. The content regains its focus, however, towards the end, when Katie starts to tell the audience of her personal experiences of sexual harassment. In these ways, focus is a huge issue for this performance, and I would be very careful when considering how all of the material presented combines to form one all-encompassing message. On the other hand, when considered as part of a trilogy, this performance is a good introduction, preparing us for the materials that will be expressed in the following plays. Yet, it still needs to have a trajectory of its own, and it feels as though, whilst Sexy Lamp focuses distinctly on sexism in the acting industry and Sticky Door on personal sexual encounters and stigmas surrounding female promiscuity, this play seems to have a very obscured premise, ranging from sex education in schools to first kisses, to the absence of laws against inequality, to sexual harassment/violence. Conversely, this play retains a lot more character than the others as we follow Katie growing up, through education, her first job, etc. It is just in need of finding that perfect balance between personality and significance: when does demonstrating character/persona complement the aims of the performance, and when does it add mere inessential texture and subtract from the content at hand? “A great performance but still in need of a firmer groundwork and focus.” Sexy Lamp In this play, Katie uses Kelly Sue DeConnick’s recognised Sexy Lamp Test as the perfect analogy of her encounters with sexism within the acting industry, demonstrating how the sexual objectification of women replaces any integrity and personality of female characters in theatre and film. This is communicated literally by Katie’s dressing as a lamp, in a matching leopard-print, satin dressing gown as the audience enter, deconstructing the very notion of the sexy lamp when she reveals herself as a human, a sentient being with an identity beyond corporeal form, and tells us her story. This play is a lot more focused than its older sister, Bicycles and Fish and charts the role the arts have played in Katie’s life clearly and efficiently. Katie conveys to us her internalised ideal of the character of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, using her as an archetype of the empowered female she yearns to be. This together with other items on her dreams bucket list constitute a thread that will run throughout the entire play, contextualising and supporting the material presented. This gives us a good ground for reading the material, as we see how dreaming to be a big star like Judy Garland motivates young actresses to expose themselves to difficult and dangerous situations within the industry and, more importantly, how this dreaming is exploited by working professionals. Using acting as a premise, Katie explores the different roles we assume in society, from fragrance-shop sales assistants doubling as escorts –– unknowingly and unwillingly, that is –– to heroes against sexual harassment on public transport, and this is an intelligent way of exposing how women are groomed in our society to assume certain roles to the benefit of men and to the detriment of themselves, and just how surprisingly easily this can be subverted. “A clear and thorough play, eye-opening and uplifting.” Sticky Door There is something significant about Sticky Door that differentiates it from the other plays. In this play, we feel as though we really uncover the true Katie Arnstein as she tells us that her storytellings have been inaccurate, untrue, that they are, in fact, retellings of experiences over which she would have liked to have more control. She defines her stage as a safe place, a place to relive memories but with a difference: she stands up for herself. In Sticky Door, Katie’s helplessness, depression, loss of self and loss of confidence is exposed, and we become aware of the true, harrowing power of misogyny and its potential ramifications for and amongst women. Katie depicts a toxic cycle of self-abuse, motivated by a need for self-liberation and self-empowerment, of independence from men. She takes our hands and journeys us through her psychology as she distances herself from male influence, scared to make her emotions available to men, scared to let men in. This is truly the most human of the trilogy, demonstrating the need for and fear of love that affects so many women today. Boxing off the playing area of the stage, leaving a doorway for Katie to exit through at the end of the performance, is a very powerful design, meaning that this ‘truly’ is a safe space that Katie can imagine into existence as a form of therapy for herself, to express these memories and thoughts to a willing and appreciative audience. I find this to be very significant. I must say that this play is utterly fraught with references to items expressed in the previous plays, and, without having seen these, these would just feel as though a series of hollow evocations. That being said, other characters, those who only played minor roles in the previous plays, make a reappearance in this play and much to its benefit, retaining a greater presence than before. The use of these characters is most rich and compelling. This play does flutter a bit with its focus, with the metaphor of the sticky door not being entirely convincing in its relationship to the content of the text, and the audio files we are presented are far too generalised for this very specific narrative. However, overall, a very clearcut and hard-hitting performance. “A powerful performance tackling human themes with intellect and integrity.” Photography Credit: Katie Arnstein and associates.

This review will consider Tina Jay’s Syndrome, directed by Jack Brett Anderson and staged at the Tristan Bates Theatre (located in The Actors Centre). Unfortunately, I find this play to be very uninspiring and bland, and its reasonings to be highly over-intellectualised. The text appropriates the sufferings of the soldiers of the Gulf War to, essentially, tell the story of a soldier turned gay whilst in the army. Its manner of communication is highly fallible, depicting characters through a certain sensationalisation and unrealism. It is, admittedly, the text itself with which I have a problem, however, as I find the actors to be most strong and skilled. The actors each demonstrate transformativity and vitality and assume their roles with vigour and high engageability. The only issue I have with the actors is that their overall delivery of banter is rather overcooked, wooden, but, other than this, this is a cast of remarkable performers. The dramatic text we are presented is very unstable and inconsistent, extremified by the drastic changes of time, place and character in the second act. Suddenly, Matt (Robert Wilde) is homosexual, turned gay by Gabe (Akshay Kumar) with whom he professes to have felt a deep and magic chemistry, despite such being completely inexistent and unrepresented elsewhere, and his strong and longevitous heterosexual relationship is now falling apart thanks to one isolated [and confounding in itself] kiss with a man; the characters suddenly all have a profound respect for Gabe and admire him after showing him nothing but hatred, ostracisation and disapproval; Tayze (also played by Kumar) is suddenly comfortable with such intimate and romantic activities as spooning and handholding later on in Act II and does not want to be paid, without any significant changes in his and Matt’s situation… All of these features make for a fluttering and incoherent text. It seems as though Jay’s writing is far too concerned with events as opposed to realistic and palpable character developments, as changes in plot are incongruous and specious. As the play ‘progresses’, its content moves further and further away from what it originally started out as. Whilst some of these drastic changes are plausible, we need to see a development in order for them to seem natural and, above all, for them to be legible. For example, given that Gabe was so reticent, reserved and loving, what could Tayze, a flamboyant and erotic rent boy, justifiably have in common with him, other than homosexual interests and our metatheatrical understanding that this is, in fact, the same actor who portrays them both? Features like these make the text seem wildly unsure of itself. We are left with absolutely no understanding as to what makes the characters feel the way they do. There is simply not enough information to contextualise such drastic changes as entire transformations in character profiles: Ray’s (Romario Simpson) transformation from lascivious Jack the Lad to committed married father, for instance. I find the text to be highly vapid in areas, particularly with the characters’ extensive focus on sex and little else. We learn extremely little about the characters because of such content, and this is what makes changes in the characters’ profiles and the events in their lives seem so flawed and unfeasible, as the sole facts that we are presented, such as Matt’s sheer devotion to his wife, are soon entirely contradicted or subverted. The second act is far more concerned with the psychology and reasoning of the characters; we finally get a glimpse into the way they see the world, but it is rather too late by this point. Other than Gabe, no characters reveal any palpable aspects of their personalities, emotions or psychologies. When we are presented other, new facts, such as Matt suddenly being head over heels in love with Gabe, a certain disparateness, a friction occurs, and the text becomes convoluted and illegible. In this way, the first and second acts feel like completely different plays. One could, indeed, present these two acts as self-contained, separate plays and they would function just as well. I find it perplexing how little the war actually features in a play about soldiers. Jay confesses to hoping that she has depicted the Gulf War with historical accuracy, yet the only readable features of the Gulf War remain the burn pits and the ingestion of and [to some degree] the effects of PB. It is clear to me that Jay wanted to represent some impacts the Gulf War would have had on the soldiers themselves, concentrating on how this war may have impacted their lives, their minds. For this, I would recommend a complete restructuring of the text, wherein we start with the soldiers after the war (which would make sense, seeing as the post-war effects are the main focus of this story) and wherein flashbacks are used to depict specific and important moments that occurred during the war itself. Otherwise, to have the four soldiers sit around talking endlessly about banging women for the entire first act with little else to constitute the material of the play just seems most needless, not to mention celebratory of a very toxic masculinity and misogyny. As for the very writing itself, I find its structure to be most repetitive in places. There is a bland poeticism that shows itself from time to time, following a frame exemplified by this series of questions taken loosely from the text: "Do you think it will ever end?" "What, the war?" "No, the burning." Moments like these do not follow the natural patterns of speech. The suggestions made by the second speakers in these series are always out of context; it is unnatural the way they read the questions, a reading written only to produce the vapid dramatic effect in the last statement. This is most particular to the moment when Matt asks Gabe a question which he –– somehow –– reads as "When did you know you were gay?", despite the [ungrammatical and unnatural] structure of the question implying this reading in no way whatsoever. These moments are too artificial, utilised blandly for shoddy dramatic effect. On to set (designed by Jonjo McGuire) and costume. Despite some aspects of the set seeming rather cheap, there is a certain claustrophobia to this design that I definitely admire, from the tight playing area in the first act to the thin gauze composing the back wall of Deno’s (Kerim Hassan) flat, revealing the camouflage netting behind, as though the war remains a backdrop to Deno’s life. Whilst the fundamental aspects of the set, the construction of an army campsite and of rooms, is refined and articulate, I find, again, that there is a certain needless over-intellectualisation underlying artistic decisions –– the fact that the set is within a shipping container, for example. Costume, on the other hand, is very well designed and articulate throughout, though I do find Matt’s costume in the second act to be rather incongruous with his character. As for technical components, lighting (designed by Matt Carnazza) is simple, in a most effective and intelligent way, and focuses the eye well. Music, however, ignoring the technical difficulties which saw music play when it was not supposed to in Act II, is utterly bizarre. I cannot at all fathom why reggae music and 90’s/00’s music made its way into this play. The selection of songs is completely incongruous with the material and adds an unwanted campiness and regressive exoticism, just another example of the incertitude of this dramatic text. “A weak and spineless play, kept afloat only by its strong performers.”

This is a very enjoyable performance, offering a rich and textured story that blends traditional African spiritualism with modern-day sociocultural concerns. Written by Temi Wilkey, The High Table follows the story of lesbian lovers Tara (Cherrelle Skeete) and Leah (Ibinabo Jack) who are soon to be wed in spite of cultural prejudices and of Tara’s parents’ disapproval. The forbidden love of two homosexuals is not a unique premise for a play, this is true, but the direct association this play makes between African spiritual ideals, cultural values and homosexuality is quite original, indeed. The play voices the effects of colonialist ideology on contemporary African views on homosexuality, something rarely addressed in this fashion, and uses the spirits of the ancestors, primarily spirit Yetunde (Jumoké Fashola) and the imagery she uses, to evoke Africa’s history before said colonisation. The text is very thought-provoking in this way and comprises very heavy and challenging topics, such as hate incidents and governmental injustices, asylum-seeking and suicide, but does so with a certain ease and intelligence. The spirits of the ancestors are used in this play as our moral and intellectual guides through the story, their moral thinkings adapting as the story unfolds, and I think this is a clever, if rather direct, way of presenting the themes of the text. The actors in this play are very engaging, sufficiently humorous and compelling where they ought to be. They each remain sure of their characters’ intentions and objectives, performing with convincing and coherent emotion. These are strong performers. There does lack, however, a sense of believability, especially given that, on the night I saw the performance, the vast majority of the cast stumbled over their lines repeatedly. There is definitely a sense of rigidity in their performances at times, and I would have liked to see more energy from them in areas, especially where transformativity is concerned; it took me some time, as it did other, vocal members of the audience, to realise, for example, that the actors were, in fact, multi-roling. Another related issue that I have pertains to the actors’ use of movement in this performance –– a directorial issue, I should add. There is a particular movement Fashola makes repeatedly throughout the play when she enters into an almost trance-like state, accompanied by the tense sound of the percussionist’s (Mohamed Gueye) drumming. Fashola kicks her feet on the ground, staying in one spot, turning to each side of the stage whilst she speaks. I find Fashola’s physicality in these moments to be most energyless to such an extent that her movements seem awkward and unseemly. These moments are rather laughable and ineffective, and so I would like to see more vitality and severity here. Conversely, there is another type of movement which all actors perform at some point during the play, and this is a slow, stylised series of movements accompanied by stark coloured washes (lighting designed by José Tevar) and dramatic music. These sequences are far too incongruous stylistically with the rest of the performance and stick out sorely as overdramatic and cheap, especially with this drastic change in technical components as well. On the topic of music, I must commend percussionist Gueye for his drumming. Gueye’s music adds severity, tone and texture to the performance, increasing drama, tension, suspense and sensation. I find his integration into the world of the play to be rather strange, however. Gueye sits Upstage Right with a persistent smile on his face, reacting subtly to the dialogues ensuing amongst the spirits below him. He is even acknowledged by the spirits at some point. I would prefer he be silhouetted when not playing his music, rather than integrated into the action; otherwise, this complicates our reading of space and function. As for pre-recorded music, I find the usage of this to be fallible when played alongside Gueye’s live drumming; its usage within the material realm, however, when Tara and Leah listen and dance to their songs on their phones, for example, is most apt. As for sound, one thing that sticks out for me is the use of echoing when the spirits speak. This is most otherworldly and effective — a most commendable decision. As alluded to above, in this play, there are two worlds: the spiritual realm and the material realm. The two are differentiated very effectively, principally through the use of space, costume and sound. The action that transpires in the material world is presented downstage, in a small clearing amongst the brown dust, and the consistency of this makes for better readability but also for better spatial organisation. Slight alterations of costume –– such as the material Jack ties around her waist when playing Adebisi, used as a head towel or placed to the side of the stage when she plays Leah –– also help to indicate such a change in setting. Such features also indicate an interrelationship between the material realm and the spiritual, which I favour. Characters from the material world also have a certain interaction with the set (designed by Natasha Jenkins), sweeping the dust upon it off of the clearing with a traditional African sweeping broom (those usually made of palm-tree branches / twigs), just as one might sweep one’s compound in Africa. This adds relatable and comical cultural references to the dramatic text, though I am not sure what such dust would be doing in the living rooms of African families living in London, as Tara’s are. The characters also clear paths, as Tara does when requesting that her mother leave, and actions like this are less legible and rather too histrionic. The set otherwise captures a very legible afterlife inspired by the vast planes of Africa. Overall, this is a very gripping performance. However, I feel that the text relies too heavily on comedy in places where it could present quite serious content, and I find certain content, particularly that involving the spirits, to be rather repetitive and bland, overall. Homosexuality is once again synonymous with struggle and suffering, and I find that the text follows a rather bleak and seemingly unending trend in contemporary literature, however gratifying and heartwarming the very ending may be. I would also recommend strengthening scenes between Tara and Leah which oftentimes feel unnaturally gushy and overplayed. This being said, the manner in which the content of this play is communicated is most refreshing and intriguing; I just believe that the text carries the actors at times and vice versa at others. Finding a balance between the poignancy of certain scenes and articulacy in acting in certain areas would vastly benefit this play. “Enjoyable and endearing yet lacking a certain vigour.”

Before starting this review, I should note that there are different versions of this performance available, some for children and some for adults only, and the content constituting each show, I am sure, varies from performance to performance. This review will consider the performance of 12th February at Wanstead Library, intended for very young to young children, and families. Mama G’s Story Time Roadshow is a delight for both its young and adult audience members with a very wholesome message for our young: be who you want to be and love who you want to love. Delivered from a pantomime dame, this message is all the more direct and poignant, an important philosophy to have the children of today internalise. Mama G’s stories focus on developing disruptive identities, those which stand out from the masses and refusing to follow norms, celebrating a male dinosaur who discovers a love for dressing in women’s clothing, and a horse who yearns to be a unicorn in spite of apparent physical limitations. These characters and their stories serve as intelligent and endearing frameworks for children to explore topics still stigmatised and abnormalised today, and, given that Mama G also sells story-time CDs for children to take home, these philosophies are permitted to extend beyond the stage and become integral features of children’s lives. In fact, several parents/guardians amongst the audience revealed to me that their children were obsessed with Mama G’s stories, that they listen to the CDs on repeat and can recite the stories by heart. In this way, this work is most progressive, positive and encouraging and could serve as a particular, fundamental lifeline for children in need of exposure to the unconventional. This performance is inextricably confined to a discourse on gender — considering Mama G as a pantomime dame, her cross-dressing T-Rex, her song about the LGBT+ flag, etc. — and so one must consider how this discourse is being utilised by the performance and what the performance achieves and communicates by such utilisation. Mama G presents a very important and positive rhetoric for her young audience, exposing them to LGBT+ themes early in life. If done properly, and, for the most part of this performance, it is, this could be highly encouraging and eye-opening, allowing young children to experience profound and poignant contemporary philosophies wildly unavailable to them in mainstream children’s entertainment. In Mama G’s stories, both the male T-Rex, Little Roar, and the female horse, Eunice, are courageous in establishing an identity of their own, one which disrupts the norms of the environments they inhabit, causing discomfort in others around them. In negligence of this, the characters continue to be themselves and to dream big. Whilst the story of Little Roar promotes acceptance of transvestism, one could see Eunice’s story, her transitioning from horse to unicorn, as a positive depiction of the transgender experience, using the symbol of the unicorn, common to the LGBT+ community, to facilitate this. Eunice is uncomfortable with her existing identity and wants to be something different and so changes her identity to feel better in her own skin. However, this remains only a reading based on retrospect. This is not explicitly a story of a transgender horse, and I think comparing a real animal with a mythological one is not the best articulation of the struggles of transgender people. So, what is this story about? Indeed, I find the significance of Eunice’s story to be rather vague and feel it encroaches upon a negative territory, that of following, ironically, gender-specific trends in children’s literature. Whilst Little Roar’s cross-dressing is something that complements his established identity, something that draws out what is inside of him already, so to speak, Eunice’s wanting to be a unicorn is a complete disregard of her existing identity and the assumption of an imaginary one. By using ‘magic’, ‘dreams’ and other suchlike mystical and, above all, immaterial means, Eunice rejects her identity and changes herself completely. This reflects the literary trend of presenting young females as image-obsessed but also one which teaches them to rely on the immaterial, to have little physical interaction with the material world. Whilst Little Roar’s actions alter the world around him, with other characters learning to broaden their horizons and accept him for what he is and with Little Roar going on to be a famous fashion designer, Eunice’s doings remain completely imaginary, with her transformation not only being an impermanent dress-up but also having no effect on neither her future nor her present surroundings [as the discomfort of her friends, though they learn to accept and not question her, still feels resonant]. Reliant on fleeting, impermanent factors, such as eating glitter and sticking a glue stick to her head, Eunice’s ‘elegant’ transformation — an important descriptor — is itself fleeting and impermanent but, more importantly, extreme. Beyond this, these outlandish acts, alongside Mama G’s delivery of them as she exaggerates shock and surprise, encourage the children to laugh at Eunice’s dream, which is the very thing Mama G repetitively warns against. There is a certain uneasiness in her message in this respect. I would urge not necessarily a total reconsideration of Eunice’s story but many modifications within it. We are in need as a society of more stories that present empowered females whose desires and actions have substantial physical effects on the world in which they live and females unconcerned with beauty or image, females I would hope a performance of this nature would depict. [Again, content changes from performance to performance, and so maybe such stories are presented in others; I can only comment upon this performance alone, however]. The character of Mama G is most definitely one of charm and vitality, and performer Robert Pearce’s boundless energy complements this well. Comical movements and witty ad-libs make for a truly engaging performance for both children and adults. In fact, Mama G seemed to have quite the spellbinding effect upon the adults in the same way as upon the children on the day I watched this performance, given their glued eyes and heavy laughter. I would just recommend altering this particular dramatic text to accommodate the children even more, given that these should be the primary audience. Shifting from an overly child-oriented and lullaby-esque Mama G-special rendition of ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Roar’ to stories containing language better suited to seven-year-olds and over, and, finally, to a T-Rex with a so-called “millinery passion”, there is a huge inconsistency in language, material and style, in both the manner in which Mama G addresses her audience and whom Mama G treats her audience to be. Certain features — such as descriptions using registers of language higher than those comprehensible by young children — need to be omitted completely and replaced with child-oriented material. Such language has no place in a performance like this and is a simple business move to attract adults to buy into Mama G’s brand; it is simply unseemly in performance. I shall now move on to specific storytelling techniques. Instrumental music certainly plays a large part in this performance, used as a backing to both Mama G’s songs and her stories. The usage of this music is slick, seamless and impressive, and it is clear that Pearce is very experienced and organised with his equipment. Volume, however, seems to be an issue at times, having to be in-/decreased at various intervals, taking away from the performativity of certain segments. Another key element is movement and dancing, either through teaching the audience dance moves that they must repeat in song or with Mama G’s own personal dancerly movements and gestures. I would have liked more of these, but, overall, these were sufficient in mesmerising the young audience members and in making the adult audience members laugh. Props are fundamental, from the music equipment to books, to bags, to puppets. All props are used well with the exception of this latter, the puppets. These feature in the story of Eunice but are used without a proper introduction. Mama G is already halfway through the story when the puppets make a bland, abrupt and, above all, unmarked appearance. This is really a great opportunity to add some wonder and magic to the show. Introduce Eunice (the puppet) from the beginning of the story, show her to the children, animate her. She is simply used in a rendition of ‘Old McDonald Had a Farm’ and put straight back to bed, after ‘whispering’ something into Mama G’s ear just that little too late. The magic bag, however, is a simple yet successful trick. Beyond the music, I would recommend that storytelling techniques be uniquer and more particularised to the performance and that they be used more vigorously, imaginatively, thoughtfully. Whilst I find the alteration of existing nursery rhymes or the use of existing stories by other authors to be a successful and viable way to help children bridge their current understanding of the world together with the world presented by Mama G, that which communicates and celebrates LGBT+ themes, there still lacks a sense of individuality in this performance. It remains difficult for me to grasp Mama G’s character beyond a generic pantomime dame — a self-given title that I find not entirely accurate to describe Mama G’s character type — and a voicer of LGBT+ themes. I would simply like to see more work go into the particularisation of Mama G’s character and her manner of storytelling. There are a lot of elements that could do with further refinement. This being said, Mama G provides a safe space for a certain expression and experience unavailable so distinctly elsewhere. Energy and momentum are faultless, and storytelling and techniques remain varied and engaging. A most captivating performance for the young. “A special and unique experience, educative and endearing.”

Written by Margaret Perry and directed by Thomas Martin, Collapsible presents a narrative of postmodern solipsism, a reflection on the self and one’s identity in an age dominated by crisis, destruction, instability and a lack of hope, compassion and sociability. It follows an unemployed Essie (Breffni Holahan) who struggles to find not only a job but herself. Dissociated and overwhelmed by the world, Essie observes the seemingly concrete identities of others and questions the characteristics of her own, haunted by what others may think of her and by actions of the past that no longer seem her own, trying and failing to find her place. This dramatic text has a great premise. It is relevant and topical and speaks poignantly to widespread intersubjective concerns about one’s loss of self and one’s responsibility towards and agency within the external world. Its writing has a poetic and visceral quality to it, tackling real human issues with emotion and feeling. This is most successful. One other thing the text is particularly good at is demonstrating setting without too many irksome direct references. The information we receive is just enough to capture location and relationship, and this is most effective. However, we are given very little to distinguish the character of Essie; it is more in Holahan’s portrayal of her that character is conveyed. This is quite an issue. For a play that revolves around lack [or loss] of identity, we need to feel some sort of compromise of identity. Instead, from the very beginning of the play, Essie’s profile remains dilute, and the degradation of any humanness simply quickens, worsens. Essie’s character always feels airy and vapid, and we only really get to understand her through the information on her that we receive from other characters and by the feelings that she depicts. This makes her seem as though a vessel of fleeting emotions and behaviours rather than a fixed person who is experiencing these. A sense of hollowness in Essie’s character is certainly desirable but should develop gradually throughout the text; it should not be immediate; otherwise, there is nothing substantial to follow, and the text remains somewhat shallow, repetitive and monotonous. I must admit that this same effect is true of Holahan’s characterisation as well. Before moving on to such characterisation, I shall clarify that both the text and Holahan’s performance are excellent, but there could be a more refined degradation into Essie’s lack of self, and slightly more variation in Holahan’s portrayal. This is my only main issue. Holahan’s portrayal sees Essie as inhuman, demented and intense, wide-eyed and staring into the audience, adopting at times uncomfortable, contorted positions. Initially, this is most consuming and powerful, but it soon becomes highly superficial, complicating our reading of Essie as a person with logical/realistic emotional processes and susceptibility. Along with the poeticism of the text, Essie becomes dehumanised through Holahan’s portrayal, and so we lose the grit and rawness beneath the story, its humanity. This is most problematic for the final moments of the play where Derek makes an appearance, and we are forced to consider Essie as real, as human, as a tangible person. All of this being said, Holahan’s portrayal is captivating throughout. Her comedic timing is superb, complementing well the humour within the text, and her characterisation is continuous, coherent and compelling. Holahan distinguishes between her characters most seamlessly and in a manner I find most refreshing and almost exemplary. Rather than turning from side to side or changing tone or voice completely, assuming drastically different positions, etc., Holahan simply runs through the dialogue, changing only her expression and, much less dramatically, her posture and physicality. For the majority of her performance, this works incredibly well and guides us through the text in a fluid fashion. There are times, however, where such distinctions are lacking and character changes are difficult to read, but this is rare. Holahan performs with tireless energy and vitality. With the nature of the set demanding highly restricted movement, Holahan retains animation and variation in her performance. Director Thomas Martin has certainly considered physicality and its communications very cleverly, without inviting too much movement, which would seem unnatural and robotic. This brings me on to set (designed by Alison Neighbour). The set for this performance is truly beautiful, comprising a ground of fine aggregate and dirt through which pierce three tall metal beams, one of which supports a small ‘concrete’ platform for Holahan to sit on. Whilst I do enjoy this set design, I do not think it is the best suited for this performance. I understand that this is meant to represent a [de]construction site, one seeming disused, drab and unworkable, and that this is intended to be symbolic of the de-/re-/construction of Essie’s identity and/or the hopeless moribundity of the world itself which Essie inhabits. yet this is a very literal symbolism of a mere theme that does not evoke the personality of the text. When Derek later enters the stage, further complications arise. This is a moment where the audience is intended to be conscious of the real world, to see Derek and Essie as real people having a real — and peculiar — interaction that extends past the confusions of events in Essie’s head. This is the first and only time that we get a glimpse into the world beyond Essie’s understanding of it, or lack thereof, and so it feels erroneous for this set, which the actor playing Derek enters into and stands upon, to be so overly fictive and otherworldly. One feature I do really enjoy, though, and feel worthy of a mention is the small collection of dust placed on top of the platform. This crumbles now and again, whenever Holahan moves, to form a fine free-falling mist, evoking throughout that sense of falling apart. Lighting (designed by Alex Fernandes) is a very strong element of this performance, complementing and informing us of event and narrative extremely well. Whilst I do not favour this final scene between Derek and Essie, I must mention that lighting has a very particular and fruitful role within it. An intense and blinding light is shone into the audience, and when the stage is lit once more, along with the house itself, Derek has stood up from amongst the spectators. This is a very simple yet highly effective way of defictionalising the stage, drawing our attention to ourselves and the world beyond the play i.e. the world outside of Essie’s head. Lighting has a similar storytelling role in other places during the performance, one example of this being shortly before this final scene, when Holahan stands up upon the platform, her delivery becoming sharper and more urgent. In this moment, the lights fade until a simple orange wash illuminates her from behind as a silhouette before a complete blackout takes the stage. This really conveys that sense of disappearance, of the evanescence of identity and self and of one’s direct relationship to the world. Sound (designed by Jon McLeod) is used minimally in this performance, mostly to determine scene changes. Here, a sound similar to that of a stone falling into water is played, usually combined with a leg movement from Holahan as though she is about to step off the platform as she delivers her line, interrupted, ‘Feet firmly on the... [ground]’. This is a motif used throughout the play and one which I find to be rather needless, robotic and ineffective in its awkward referentiality to set. It does, however, add slight structure, mood and texture to the performance. To conclude, this remains a very evocative, poignant and visceral performance. It is both hard-hitting and alleviating, humorous and serious, poetic and raw. However, with the poeticism of the text, Holahan’s dehumanising portrayal, the overly fictionalising set, etc., the extent of the play remains entirely theatrical, reducing significance and meaning and, rather ironically, impact. This is a very articulate and refined piece of theatre, but slight alterations need to be made in order to really let the heart, richness and depth of the text shine through. “A very compelling performance, otherworldly yet topical.”

Produced by The Feathers of Daedalus Circus and performed at The Vaults in London, Tarot is a seemly blend of cabaret and circus, inspiring outright awe and wonder in its spectators. The first noticeable feature of this performance is its dark, coherent and slick aesthetic. Costume and set alike are contemporary, gothic and seductive, combining the peculiarities of cabaret with the imagery and ambiance affiliated with tarot readings, a fresh and intelligent vision. So dimly lit and packed full with spectators, the space feels almost claustrophobic, with limited stage space enhancing the incredibility of the acrobatics and gymnastics performed within it. Performers definitely have an astute and trained awareness of the space they are inhabiting, performing with localised and refined, though not in any way inhibited, movements. Performers also ascend to the rigging above, in hoops and on ropes and chains, meaning that space is also expanded beautifully vertically. The only [indirect] issues I really have with this definitive and refined aesthetic are certainly minute. These are the trainers that quite a few of the musicians are wearing, subtracting from the otherwise strong burlesque-meets-hippie-goth vision, and the fact that the Emcee (Ruby Wednesday) exposes the candles as artificial, describing them rather self-knowingly and facetiously as a risk against ‘health and safety’ regulations. With a performance exerting rather psychic themes as tarot, any destruction of illusion whatsoever can only be subtractive and discordant. Other than these small issues, a most remarkable aesthetic of crushed velvet and tight gauze. On to the performance itself, starting, of course, with the Emcee. The Emcee for this performance plays a peculiar role, mostly retaining the subversive and disruptive profile of the traditional cabaret Emcee but with a distinct twist, the origins of whose origins lie in a contemporary understanding of queerness and gender-bending. This is achieved through the Emcee’s androgyny, dick jokes, overt bi-/pansexuality and, above all, his direct references to his queerness. The only trouble with this, however, is that the Emcee loses his particularity — where the bizarre behaviour and outlandish costuming of the Emcee is traditionally presented as simply accepted and ‘normal’, unchallenged and unreferenced; he simply is and is allowed to be, unquestioned — and discourses surrounding gender and, though less potently, drag performance infiltrate the work in this way, confusing style and genre with extending sociopolitical significance. However, this could be read as though, much like the cabaret of 1930s Berlin, the cabaret influences here are reflecting the modern understanding of queerness and the fluidity of gender and sexuality…but for what cause? This Emcee retains a certain crazed volatility and unpredictability, cackling madly at times and singing in enigmatic lyric at others, yet his energy is rather low, overall. I would have liked to see more from Ruby, especially during the act that sees him sat cross-legged in a suspended hoop, stopping every so often in the air to the rising music. This particular act, I feel, was most anticlimactic, with all movements being rather lacklustre, repetitive and lethargic, and with the hoop turning in such a way that Ruby would be facing away from us for the entire song. Ruby remains both enchanting and seductive but has insufficient performativity, almost as if he is relying on his look to carry his character. He is certainly comical, with his witty remarks and jokes, but there are definite limitations to this humour, as comedic timing is not a conspicuous strongpoint of his. Furthermore, there seems to be a lack of preparation for Ruby’s tarot readings, with Ruby visibly finding it difficult to produce cogent and coherent readings for the players. On the night I attended this performance, there was also a notable difference in the way in which he interacted with the first player vs the second, making for a sense of discontinuity in his persona. Ruby remained rather restrictive with this first player, almost reticent, not willing to give too much effort or pizzazz, as though hiding behind the mysteriousness of his persona; yet, for the second player, he seemed to come out of himself, losing the mysterious persona altogether and becoming more conversational and informal. It is here, too, that he mentioned that the candles were artificial. I understand that the trajectories behind these two readings were very different, the first seeming to be guided by allusions to the player‘s relationship troubles and the second concerning the future success or failure of the player’s own performance to be staged soon, also at The Vaults, and so, naturally, the first would be — initially — rather imprecise and cryptic compared to the second, but, ultimately, with good planning and effort, this should make no difference. Ruby stated that it is difficult to talk about such intimate issues with players in front of an audience, and, to me, this just seems as though a poor excuse for a vapid reading. It should be remembered that this is not just an everyday tarot reading where privacy is key but one within the context of a performance, a shared and communal experience, and, moreover, a reading upon which the performance, if momentarily, depends. Ruby should be willing to push audience members to divulge these informations in this way if these are the very subject of the reading, otherwise what purpose does the reading serve? What can it possibly uncover or demonstrate? It is highly fallible to design such fragile moments that depend solely on the audience member’s willingness to participate or divulge personal information to be successful — not that Ruby really even attempted to get this information out of the player or to see if this would, indeed, have been appropriate/acceptable in their eyes. In these moments, the audience are given far too much agency, and this agency should be stripped back significantly, if not eliminated entirely, if these readings are to be successful and viable as such integral parts of the performance. I am also curious to know what procedure is in place for when no audience members whatsoever volunteer to have a tarot reading… In performances like these, requesting things of the audience, instead of demanding things of them — especially when the figure of the Emcee is supposed to be daring, enigmatic and, frankly, scary — is most fallible, much like when Ruby asks if the audience members know the suits of tarot, inspiring awkward, tense and stuttering responses. With regards to the other performers, the acro stunts and formations that we are presented are highly successful in their ability to astound and bewilder. The repertoire devised in this performance is wonderfully varied, full of constant surprises and show-stopping acts. The performers have great poise and presence, equally as alluring, ghostly and seductive as Ruby. However, each of these performers inarguably requires a lot more physical practice, primarily where acro stunts are concerned, being shaky and unrefined in most of their movements as a collective; individually, though, they are very almost perfect. In this way, the seemingly inconceivable and inhuman nature of these acts, as well as their sheer variety, almost begin to captivate us more than the performers’ bodily control and articulacy as an ensemble. Despite the diversity of material, this performance could definitely give a lot more. In this performance, precious, fleeting time is hugely consumed by the performers’ initial interactions with their articles and props, intended for style and effect. Performers each assume a rather animalistic or creaturely stance, usually on all fours, and glare at the ropes, hoops or chains, etc. as though attempting to entrance them. Indeed, this is alluring and hypnotic at first, but it quickly becomes overused, slowing the acts down considerably. There is a lot more that this time could be used for besides these glares and slow, ‘mystical’ movements. As for the Emcee’s fire art, this is a most unexpected and enthralling way to end the performance, highly successful and efficacious. Again, there are just the recurrent issues of repetitiveness of movement and Ruby’s exposure of artificiality. The beauty and intrigue of fire art have predominantly to do with the proposal of danger, that this is a roaring, ferocious naked flame; so, whilst I understand the subversion and dominance Ruby exerts whilst wiggling his fingers into the fire, pairing this with tracing the flame over the body again and again simply overemphasises the harmlessness of the fire, obliterating any remaining sense of risk, shock and terror affiliated so wonderfully with the art form. The repetition of this becomes, too, time-consuming and bizarre (and not in an effective cabaret-esque manner). The musicians, which form soul-funk band Yoshi, are most definitely very talented. Their music makes for a consistent style, without motif yet with the same rhythm and tempo and within a consistent genre, adding texture, mood and tone, crescendoing and falling where necessary for drama, tension and suspense. The music is most promising in this way. However, there is a sporadic disturbance in the music which comes to full-fledged fruition towards the end, and this makes for friction not only in the style of the music but in the style of the performance itself. One musician, formerly the pianist and vocalist of the band, takes to a peculiar rapping, preempted by a sluggish “Yo…yo…yo…”. This is both neither a genre the vocalist seems particularly attuned to performing nor a genre pertinent to this performance. In addition, rapping later begins to approximate at points the deliberately over-performative chantings affiliated with vogueing, again calling forward this contemporary discourse of gender performativity where it is not warranted or relevant, and the music thus loses even more integrity. Besides this, however, lyrics remain poignant and eerie, gothic and inspired, and musicians play admirably with casual discipline and controlled fluidity. As a final note, I found the imagery and symbolism regarding tarot to be rather negligible, which is a huge concept flaw. This entire show –– with omission, of course, of the tarot readings –– could be performed without even a mere allusion to tarot in the slightest. This performance claims to comprise ‘tarot-led circus acts’, but, as I hope to have elucidated above, the relationship between the selected tarot cards, the ‘story’ resulting from these and the circus acts themselves bear no palpable relationship. The performers could just as well hand the Emcee cards with a piece of card detailing the next stunt or act; the Emcee would introduce it; and it would be performed, all in the exact same manner as per the theme of tarot. What is tarot really bringing to this performance that nothing else could? How, specifically, does it modify structure and embellish content in an unequivocal way? What does tarot offer that generic playing cards, for instance, with their suits and figures, could not? This lack of specificity and particularisation of theme is a huge flaw for this performance. Tarot readings in themselves are just as vague. Ruby seems to describe only what the cards signify in themselves as opposed to how this signification might be applied to events in the player’s life. The reading he provides the second player with was definitely more articulate but was more of an artist-to-artist counsel as opposed to valid utilisation of the tarot cards. Overall, this is a very gripping performance with huge promise and potential. It is a most unique and captivating experience. Its main issue really revolves around its duration; the performance does not leave enough time for the material to mature, nor for us to fully appreciate and digest it. There seem to be several very unique and credulous trajectories at the fundament of the work, yet these remain rather superficial and basic, for they are neither sufficiently developed individually nor combined together as well as they could be. This is truest of the performance’s incorporation of story which remains bland and shallow, a poor excuse to merely loosely contextualise the circus acts presented. The Feathers Daedalus Circus need to find a preciser, creative and tailored way to imagine and contextualise storytelling within this performance, or it needs to be eliminated completely. As it stands, a few cards are singled out –– e.g. the fool, the lovers, the hierophant, etc. –– and these each inspire the circus acts presented; there is no such story present here. Specific decisions, such as providing audience members with a tarot card each or even the tarot readings, need to be more complex and have an actual, readable and poignant impact on the performance. These elements need to feel necessary, not simple time-fillers, bonuses or superfluous oddities but obligatory, unmissable factors, nay determinants, of the performance. Such developments in these elements will progress them from merely aesthetic and omittable to fundamental elements of a cohesive and decisive performance. “Sensational and bewitching.”