NB: For clarification, where ‘Ava’ is written in this review, this refers to the character of Ava within this performance; where ‘Ava Gardner’ or ‘Gardner’ is written, this refers to the real Ava Gardner herself. Based on the book of the same name by Peter Evans and Ava Gardner, playwright Elizabeth McGovern performs as Ava in her new play directed by Gaby Dellal and staged at Riverside Studios: Ava: The Secret Conversations. I shall start with the thing that really sets this play apart from others: its set design. The set for this performance (designed by Hannah Rozenberg under the direction of Leo Warner and Ben Pearcy) is both stunning and unique. Projections (video designs by Matthew Taylor) and detailed set furnishings really allow for a transformativity of the stage and a distinctness in its various locations. I would just recommend that the wallpaper chosen for Ava’s lounge stay consistent throughout, especially if furniture will stay the same, to ascertain that this is, indeed, the same room. However, the projected footage of Ava Gardner, though relative to the chronology of the narrative of the play, is in stylistic and topical juxtaposition with the content we are being presented by the actors. Merely the knowledge that Gardner is a performer, for example, or the playing of swing music, is not enough to justify the inclusion of footage of her singing and dancing at any given moment. This footage should aim to coincide with and complement the meanings and subjects proposed to us by the texts it rests in-between and not merely to present excess material relative to the mere theme of Hollywood and the past of our titular character. Following on from a recent surge in biographical works centred on celebrities, particularly those from Hollywood, just as in this case, this set design certainly gets its inspiration, whether actively or not, from such contemporary representations in film. The sliding panels that frame the stage are reminiscent of simultaneous scenes or “split screens” in mainstream cinema, where a defined black border both separates the multiple scenes from one another and borders the overall frame according to the desired aspect ratio. This is a clever design and, again, aesthetically very appealing. The scope of the stage is toyed with so beautifully by this framing, providing every perspective from complete access to Ava’s lounge to a shrinking view of her hand alone, and this is most successful in focusing audience attention accurately. However, despite the integrity this design has in itself, the very thing it evokes, contemporary Hollywood cinema, and film in general, is not representative of the era in focus, and so an overall feel and aesthetic for Ava’s lifetime, both in her youth and maturity, is thus compromised. We lose the glitz and glamour of the Golden Age and are presented with a visual reflection of current times, and this is most subtractive for a biographical work dealing with a historical figure. There is notably also a danger of distracting the audience with just how efficient and dynamic the aesthetics of this performance are. Actively focusing our attention, actively shaping our fourth wall, the passive moving frame becomes an agent in itself, allowing for an acute awareness of technical elements that easily lifts an audience from the world of the play and into a fascination with theatrical constituents and “the power” and “possibilities” of theatre itself. It is easy, therefore, to confuse this fascination with an acknowledgement that the set design actually progressed, benefitted and consolidated the action we are presented [as opposed to evoking merely a similar sentiment]. I do not believe it did. My last issue has to do with this aforementioned efficiency. Ironically, I would have liked a great deal more accuracy and precision with this framing, which was at times shaky and unstable, its vibrations causing the projector, and thus the entirety of the image forming our background, to shake along with it. For instance, during the scene wherein Peter (Anatol Yusef) returns home ‘in the rain’, he is followed and framed by a rectangular portrait window, made by these dark sliding panels, yet is only visible head-on as he traverses the stage. As soon as he is slightly to the left or right from any given audience member, he is immediately partially obscured by the side of the frame. In fact, there was an instance where I could not see him at all, only the set behind him. This is exactly what I mean by a [needless] heavy use of technical elements that distract the audience away from the very action of the play that actually matters, but a lack of precision as perceptible here also constitutes a theme I will return to often in this review. As for writing, I note the deliberate decision to have Gardner’s story overshadowed by the famous men that surrounded her, both with Peter’s agent’s requests for more information on them alone –– only for this ignorant information to be seen as a recount of HER life –– and with Peter falling in love with Ava himself, as though she remains throughout, in the past as now, an irresistible, mystical seductress and nothing more. And this is something we see Ava struggling with as she aims to reconstruct herself as someone who does not swear, who is not promiscuous, who is philosophical and intellectual, focused on serious matters such as mortality and the preciousness of life, having nearly lost her own. This focus on the men in her life intensifies as the play goes on, and, in theory, this is most beneficial to our reading of her image. However, because of how deliberate and constant this is, when we realise at the end that we have not found out an incredible amount about Gardner herself, it is natural to feel rather disappointed and cheated of our time. Furthermore, there are so many of these famous men in focus that each has too little stage time for us to feel that their presences are sufficient and substantial enough to declare this story about them, either, meaning that it is easy to feel that this story is about everyone and yet no one simultaneously. The play attempts a documentation of Gardner’s life, but what we actually receive is a glitzy series of caricatures representative of familiar famous faces. This is further complicated by stylistic and technical eccentricities, such as McGovern and Yusef’s rather self-mocking and stylistically incongruous dancing together as Ava and Michael Rooney, to such a degree that the focus remains principally on the theatricality –– or, otherwise, the aesthetic/external accuracy –– of the representations we are presented, as opposed to on veracity and relatability. We lose sense of the human in this story very early on, and what could be a very poignant and exposing retelling becomes a mere, unfinalised, sensationalist text. As for McGovern and Yusef’s performance, their energy is notably faultless throughout. They have great confidence and stature on stage and have defined their characters very well. However, attention to detail is incredibly lacking. Their characterisations become somewhat stilted as the performance goes on, with all idiosyncrasies the two have designed for themselves wearing thin long before the close of the play. The two, though mostly Yusef, struggle conspicuously to maintain the accents they have chosen for their characters, culminating in a shambolic and confused portrayal towards the end of the play as Yusef fails to switch distinctly between the character of Frank Sinatra and Peter, ultimately blending them with one another, then losing the rhythm and sound of each altogether. Though more of a directorial issue, I imagine, McGovern has a habit throughout of delivering her lines to the audience, looking out into the house, as opposed to at her addressee, Yusef’s character. With Yusef’s gaze kept strong and uniquely on her, this intensifies the fact that this is a representational performance, and we lose the naturalism and credibility of the scene completely. Admittedly, both actors recover very well from momentarily forgetting or stumbling over their lines, but the mere fact that these lines are stumbled over in the first place, and the frequency with which this happens, is most disappointing. There are many suchlike instances that highlight the imprecisions in these actors’ performances of these actors, and they are difficult to ignore, with Yusef bumping into one of the dresses on the clothing rack, causing it to fall off, for example, or with him having to readjust his hat that he had allowed to tilt so far forward so that it obscured his eyes. These unskillful displays certainly subtract from our reading, and better refinement and training ought to be considered. However, these performers remain consistent throughout, clear of their character intent and objectives. Diction is wonderful, for the most part, and physicality is rarely amiss. It is just the mechanicality of movements and the over-rehearsed speech that I have an issue with, overall. A few final notes. Music (sound design by Ella Wahlström) is very well composed, but it suffers from a great overuse, nay misuse. It seems as though the creatives felt the need to increase momentum or glamourise certain sequences through the use of swing music, and this is unnecessary. Music should be deliberate but only used when essential to progress the narrative, not just because it bears some relevance to Gardner’s life in show-business, and not merely to entertain or to provide the audience with a “catchy” rhythm. Costuming (wardrobe and wigs managed by Holly Gooch), however, is superb and accurate. It does retain a [preferable] understated naturalism, though, that is not present in the rest of the spectacular and sensationalist aesthetic we are provided. It feels out of place for this reason but, in itself, it is very well-conceived, indeed. Wigs are sorely artificial and need to be better treated. “A fun but incomplete performance brimming with imprecisions.”

As the writer of this play, Kieran Dee has certainly nurtured an excellent comedy type, involving decoy assumptions and reinterpretations, subversions and juxtapositions, and Dee’s delivery as a performer is just as refined. An example of this is in our understanding that Kerry has a crush on his colleague, someone he romanticises and characterises as dreamy, delightful, who then remarks that she was so drunk the night before that she put on two pairs of knickers. Kerry then remarks again how wonderful she is, and our inability to match what we experience of his crush herself versus what he tells us makes for comic tension, and hence laughter. An excellent formula executed well throughout this performance. The comical caricatures we are presented by the text, most relatable in their simplicity, also help to produce a commendable comedic effect. Dee provides us with just enough description to cause these characters to feel real and to paint a vivid picture of them in the mind, and, again, his delivery of these is most endearing, also. However, this comedy type and its delivery, the very things that constitute the most endearing quality of this performance, become its downfall. There is a certain roboticism to this performance, and this is produced by a univocal and repetitive structure. The fluid and chronological narrative is at times broken and fragmented by constant quick-witted, comical remarks or superfluous and perhaps unnecessary details — one example of such an interjection being when Kerry begins to detail a football match he has watched with his father, breaking the narrative momentarily to mention that this was the first time his father hugged him. I elucidate: this is not an issue in this one example alone, but when this style of narration is so persistent, the character’s speech becomes denaturalised and thus seems unrealistic, and steady momentum is compromised. It very quickly starts to feel jarring, incomplete, incoherent, and puts the audience in danger of feeling as though they are straining to follow along with the original line of thought. Comedy is certainly used very well in this performance but is so constant and so heavily relied upon throughout that tragic material feels underplayed. This underplaying is also due to the fact that these flippant and facetious comedic remarks are still being made during areas of tension, conflict and negative emotion. It is also because of Dee’s mechanical acting technique, but I shall elaborate upon this below. In terms of the play’s essential political subject matter, I feel that the sociopolitical agenda could be far better integrated into the dramatic text, overall. As it currently stands, the dramatic text struggles, particularly as the play goes on, to balance and marry the personal story of Kerry’s character — his [nonexistent] love life, his relationship with and grieving for his father, etc — and the sociopolitical focus on racism [in football], White ignorance and White privilege. Whilst I do admire the play’s ambition to remind us of the human behind each of the commonplace ideologies and perspectives presented, the two narratives feel distinctly disconnected, overall. For example, what does Kerry’s inability to perform spontaneous small-talk with his work crush have to do with racism? It feels that moments like this are purely for us to bond with Kerry’s character and to settle into the world of the play, and this is acceptable early on but not throughout. However, the points made by the text, especially with the simple but poignant analogy of the pie chart symbolic of the divisions or lack thereof of social privilege, are very resonant, topical and cogent. What makes this material so accessible and engaging is that our main character himself is unaware of all the answers whilst exploring, pondering and exposing truths to us. For example, he is unsure as to whether the name-calling in the latter part of the ‘We Hate Tottenham’ Chelsea football chant is offensive to Jewish people or if it should be taken as a peculiar term of endearment accepted by Jewish people themselves — which, of course, it should not be. When we are then presented the quick-fire list of elucidatory anti-racist facts at the very end of the play by a seemingly out-of-character Kieran Dee, this confirms the suspicions of our guiding protagonist and answers the questions his ponderings give rise to. This is most efficacious and revelatory. I do, however, feel that this ending is stylistically incongruous with the rest of the performance, given its stripped-back, ‘non-acting’ aesthetic, and also feel that it would be even more powerful if Dee were not reading this list verbatim from a handwritten note that has been stored until now in the wings. I understand that he desires to deliver these facts perfectly, but there is no reason as to why he cannot memorise them without this written aid, especially if this is the very essence of a performance he himself has written. To clarify, this is another reason I would like the personal story of Kerry and the sociopolitical messages of the play to be better married; we are required to bond so greatly with a character who we must, ultimately, only see as a representation, a means to a political end, a revelatory guide. Either this play must maintain this psychological realism and aim through the narrative alone to have us question the ponderings of the protagonist and the actions of surrounding characters, or we should have a stripped-back and actor-led [as opposed to character-based] performance that aims to demonstrate, explore, reveal and expose, as opposed to emulate and typify. Otherwise, such serious morale at the end feels as though an afterthought, distinctly different from the enclosed, fictional narrative presented hitherto. Nevertheless, a very important and commendable objective here. On to Dee as a performer. Dee has great energy throughout and is an engaging performer because of this, but there remain countless aspects of his acting that need substantial refinement. First, the ambit of his gaze. His gaze is restricted almost entirely to either side of the stage — predominantly Stage Left — meaning that he fails to issue his audience with significant and consistent eye contact, thus limiting the extent of potential audience engagement. Similarly, Dee regularly has his back to the audience, and these two things combined put an extreme strain on our ability to register and gauge emotion, expression and action, guiding audience attention away from what is important and essential to our reading of the play and towards the mere self-obscuring physical body of the actor himself. For a performance that is so set on having us feel, empathise, engage, this is an incredibly detrimental subtraction. Next, we have transformativity. Dee has the seeds of great caricatures that he can call upon at will, caricatures that are immediately identifiable and comprehensible, humorous and distinct. For the most part, each caricature in itself is clearly vocally defined — but only vocally. Physically, however, these caricatures remain almost entirely indiscernible, only distinguished via Kerry’s turning from left to right to represent two different characters. There also persists a tendency for the voices he has chosen for these multiple caricatures to blend in with his ‘fundamental’, ‘natural’ voice when he switches from one to the other, and this is subtractive and disappointing. This is particularly true of early moments within his caricaturisations where he quickly ‘snaps out’ of his caricature and back into the character of Kerry to provide extraneous details of this secondary character or of this situation he has found himself in with them. Then, we have pacing and the delivery of rising tension, which is an editorial, directorial and actor-led issue combined. When detailing moments of climax and great action, such as in his tense soliloquy about the increasingly rowdy and riotous football match he attends towards the middle-end of the play, Dee performs in a typical and cliché artificial manner, which consists of a rising intonation that suddenly drops and is replaced by a inflection that characterises doubt or question. Paired with the writing, we receive in quick succession hyperbolic descriptions of various happenings and of surroundings and the figures present within them, either interlinked with simple conjunctions only, such as ‘and’, or simply left as separate clauses and reeled off one after the other. This is a trend that has persisted, as evidenced in many documentations, amongst writers and actors for centuries now and is a dilute, sensationalist and unoriginal manner of presenting ‘climactic’ informations, devoid of true passion and intensity. The result is a hampered, unfulfilling and incomplete pre-packaged distress that is merely instantly recognisable and that cannot invoke any profound feeling in a spectator, especially a regular theatregoer. I would recommend a more naturalistic approach here, especially given the significance of these moments in relation to the sociopolitical focus of this play that really ought to invoke such palpable feeling in an audience if its messages are to be seen as useful, impactful and poignant, as opposed to mere regurgitations of recent societal developments. I should clarify here: Dee clearly has great and palpable vitality and, above all, passion for his work, but it is merely technique here that is inadequate. I would recommend research into the fundamentals of the psycho-technique and into the definitions of mechanical and representational acting vs naturalistic. I think these will be of use to his career in the future if he desires to pursue similar works. Finally, it is clear that nerves certainly got the better of this performer at times, as he seems to be holding back, especially during caricaturisations, with corporeal expressivity being unstable and insufficient at times. Notably, he is also acutely aware of his audience who seem to have dominion over the extremity of his performativity: the more extreme their reactions, the more energy we receive. This is evidenced by his direct acknowledgement of his audience when he first enters, gesturing to a specific audience member, with a “Hi” — which is most confrontational and hence subtractive, given that the rest of the play remains enclosed, with no use of direct audience address — and, later, with his stumbling over his lines, his development of poor diction, and his visible struggle to stop himself from laughing along with his spectators after delivering a punchline. These elements must be addressed by this performer, but such awareness and skill will come with time. The only other note I have on performance is more of a directorial issue. I noted that there is a certain roboticism to this performance, and another reason for this is the overall continuous bipartite episodic structure: ‘scene, transition, scene, transition’, with each of these scenes covering distinctly separate content. Whilst I favour the epitomic riotous/rebellious song choice and, for the most part, the transitions themselves, having Dee frozen on the spot, ready and waiting for the music to stop and the lights to change in order to be able to start the scene, then bursting into action when this is the case, is perhaps the most robotic and forced element of this performance. Finally, set and tech (lighting design by Sam Penn). Following on from my description of the transitions, tech for this performance is minimalistic, and this works well to complement the tense and busy text. The red washes, though somewhat disparate aesthetically, along with the aforementioned recurrent song, communicate well the urgency and starkness of the thornier material that we are presented. In regard to set: aesthetically, this performance has extremely limited visual appeal, I must admit, not only with its unattractive theatrical properties but with their random scattering about the stage, as though merely to have it seem filled. It is clear that Millie has recognised this, either subconsciously or consciously, with an attempt to have Dee use the space as extensively as possible. This extensive use of space is beneficial for distinguishing the late scene wherein he locks himself in his house whilst his crush talks to him through the front door, or the bedroom scene wherein he details his broken shower and the mould its leaking water leaves down his bedroom wall — though I do find it odd that such a small room that is entirely consumed merely by the bed should somehow extend from Upstage Left to Centerstage in the scene where we watch him sleep, dreaming of attending the match with his father…topography needs to be addressed here. However, Dee’s use of space is not so effective in-between scenes that start and end in the same place, usually Upstage Right, as transitions simply see him running without purpose around the stage and then back into his regular position. Having the beer bottle collections scattered around the floor, and having three of them in each where only one will be utilised, is most questionable. And the flags are too perfectly hung across the walls — again, as though there is an attempt to fill the entire wall space. It is acceptable to leave a great portion of the stage completely undecorated. Confining all action to one part of the stage is not a theatrical sin, but there must be reasoning behind all topographical decisions. “A shaky play, yet comical, endearing and resonant.”

For clarification: The title given to the 'character' in this play is Performer, and this will be distinguished in this review from the noun, 'performer', by the apt capital 'P'. I shall start with the positives. Sound design is incredibly articulate, the best I have experienced in a long time, in fact. It is crisp, well layered, well structured and authentic where it ought to be. The sound designer for this performance demonstrates great skill, talent, diligence and artistic awareness. Beautifully designed. Set design (by David Shields) communicates effectively and pleasingly not only the sentimental nature of the text, with the suspended lightbulbs representative at times of the 'stars' to which Performer (John Bell) speaks, and the candles symbolic of votive candles, but also the fragmented and eclectic nature of the written text itself. Props are sparse but very effectively used and imaginative. The handkerchiefs being symbolic of all of the men Performer could have sex with, for example, is a clever, if a little on the nose, nod to the handkerchief code. Slightly negative now… Lighting (designed by Aaron Dooster), beyond these said lightbulbs and candles, suffers from a notable overkill with the additional LED bars, the lanterns behind the set and the various washes and spots. There are, indeed, some wonderful details that Dooster has ensured to include, such as the pulsing fade spot on Bell’s left side as we imagine him in the back of a taxi, as though the passing streetlights are illuminating his face, but timing here is slightly off, and realisation is altogether too unnaturally repetitive and structured; there lacks a sense of the organic in these details. Additionally, the decision to flood the house head-on with intense lights between scenes is both unnecessary and subtractive, re-awakening and intensifying the audience’s awareness of the self and the other, taking them out of the world of the play and into the uncomfortably lit house. I would remove this altogether. I should clarify: wonderfully designed lighting, technically, but fallible in terms of relevance and congruity with style and function. Now, on to the writing. The messages, symbolism and meanings behind this performance are certainly poignant and honourable, and the poetic style employed by the performance is a sweet and thoughtful approach, when observing the context of the AIDS crisis, for example. However, the dramatic text fails to organise, balance and marry its content in such a way that a consistent reading can be offered. I should clarify first that there is nothing ‘wrong’ with a performance that aims merely to represent in succession various aspects of the experiences, feelings or aesthetics of a particular community — in this instance, the gay community of the late 20th century — or of a particular person or character, and that aims to do so with an actor-led approach, using faceless, nameless figures [as 'Performer'] and changing locations, uniting its content solely through theme, meaning or vision. However, such a performance must be dedicated to this form of theatre and storytelling from the very beginning and must be consistent in its representations. This is not the case for this performance. This dramatic text offers until its middle a simple and somewhat poetical retelling of a character’s history, and we expect to be guided through his life and experiences during the AIDS crisis. However, there is a pivotal moment in this performance, when Bell represents, without introduction, contextualisation or preparation, the character of the young gay child [who I can only assume is a younger version of this original character, though this is not made entirely clear]. After this, we are presented a range of scenes and sequences wherein Bell offers us a bizarre form of multi-roling, representing the act itself of gym-going and club-going as a gay man, for example, as opposed to his character performing these activities himself. Suddenly, our original shy, quirky and innocent character is transformed without reason into a seedy, rather ‘rapey’ promiscuous man at a club, aiming to have sex with every man in his sight. This latter representation is devoid of relatability, of the human, and is an exaggerated and archetypical representation unmarriable with this former character we are first presented. But then, straight after these scenes, we get the gentle, poetical original character back, and we continue as though nothing has happened whilst Performer dedicates a [very long-winded] verse to the character ‘Pete’, underplayed until the very end of the performance and thus unworthy of such stage time. In this tumultuous display, we lose all sense of Performer’s identity, and an overly stylised and hyperbolic delivery style has taken over what was previously a somewhat understated chronological narrative. I should clarify: there is no sense of gradual transition from the latter to the former, no sense of climax or growth, nothing to lead us from one style to another; we are simply launched between the two. Here, all sense of this performance’s identity and voice becomes confused and untraceable, and this is due to both this unsteady delivery style and this extensive fluidity of character. These scenes and sequences have no distinct correlation, other than that they are [loosely] related by the themes of gender and sexuality and the generalised 20th-century gay male's experience. How does the young gay child’s newfound interest in The Village People, for example, relate to Pete’s death? Delivery style is a notable issue for this performance, and I should emphasise that merely using poetry throughout does not make for consistency in voice and form. Poetry comes in many various distinct forms, as evidenced in this one performance, and comparing the language and structure of the opening scene — one that approximates, for its majority, natural speech patterns — with the heavily formulaic gym-going sequence seeing each segment end with the refrain, ‘that’s why I go to the gym’, exposes this stark inconsistency in form and manner. The writing is in great danger of becoming repetitive and monotonous, and this is primarily due to the much-too-similar poetic devices that Drake employs: anaphoras (I think to the segments starting with ‘held’, ‘I ran for’ and ‘the viewing’), refrains, and repetitive sequences like ‘A1, 2, 3, 4, […] B1, 2, 3, 4, […] C1 [and so on]’. Whilst such devices can certainly provide a text with structural stability and form, here I believe it simply renders the material univocal, monotonous, uninspired. The final speech, for instance, which should be very impassioned and sentimental, is, in fact, jarring and lacklustre, and this is due to the rigid syllabic structure and the bombastic/hyperbolic literary voice we are offered. It is also particularly repetitious in regard to its content; its message is communicated in full very early in, and any further communications simply regurgitate in other words the very same thing. This brings me on to acting. And I shall continue to pursue the efficacy of this final speech before giving an overall assessment of Bell's performance. Bell performs this final speech with a forced passion, aiming distinctly to typify the sentimentality and emotional significance behind the text, as opposed to channelling his efforts into the specificities, idiosyncrasies, state and psychology of his character that will, in fact, naturally invoke this desired feeling in his audience. This forcedness is perceptible throughout this performance, particularly in the delivery of verse but notably in this aforementioned club sequence that sees him flailing around the stage in a [rather ridiculous, I must say] display of his character’s drunkenness, primitivism and lack of bodily control. Bell certainly plays far too much into the unnaturalness of the poetic text, and over-expressivity compromises the integrity, relatability and humanity of his character. Rather, he presents caricatures: that of the child, that of the weight-lifting egotist, etc., and so it is difficult to feel truly connected with his profiles beyond the themes they represent. With these aforementioned repetitions within the dramatic text, with the repeated short dance transitions whose effectiveness and significance rather wear off by the third time — notably, a directorial issue, though perhaps an editorial one, too — and, finally, with these archetypical, concrete caricatures, observing any real humanity and forming any profound connection with Performer is emphatically impossible. Bell notably performs with good transformativity and great energy, but a lack of naturalism in his performance, and within the role itself, makes him largely inaccessible in this way. I shall end on perhaps a personal criticism that I should also clarify does not in any way influence my review here. This is, yet again, a depiction of the gay male set on representing him as promiscuous, an abuser of alcohol and drugs, unstable and abusive. I really fear how detrimental to our collective identity and psychology such constant and monolithic representation is. Ultimately, we are left with yet another cliché representation that is lacking in veracity and that rejects and annihilates any palpable sense of the world of the queer individual outside of the primitive and the lewd. “Monotonous, incomplete, crudely eclectic.”

For clarification: where 'Nathaniel' is mentioned in this text, this refers to the onstage persona of performer Nathaniel Hall; where 'Nathaniel Hall', or simply 'Hall', is mentioned, this refers to the performer himself. I must admit that I found myself rather at odds with the rest of the audience who seemed to really gravitate towards this performance. However, after attending the post-show Q&A, I now understand that a significant number of these audience members have had some access to this performance and to the solo performer Nathaniel Hall himself in the past — or, indeed, work with him regularly now — and are more than familiar with this performance’s nature, with the intended ethics extending beyond it, and with Hall’s own ethos, intentions and ‘soul’. I, however, can only judge this work on the performance alone, and my reading is rather different… Ultimately, Hall’s aim in this performance is to raise awareness about, destigmatise and alleviate the guilt, shame and sorrow we attach to living with HIV. It is also a very personal and cathartic performance for Hall who, through it, is staging his own personal history with the condition and the stigmas and shame he has experienced in direct relation to this. For him, this is a difficult but necessary performance. This is clearly one reason why humour — upon which I shall elaborate below — is so prevalent in this performance, to mitigate the trauma Hall attaches to this history, to keep his head above the pain this retelling brings with it, so to speak. However, just how far Hall is able to take this performance, and how it suffers or benefits from the complexity and depth of information he pours into it, is something that Hall needs to really explore as an artist if his work is to maintain the activism, integrity and intellect he clearly possesses outside of this performance. His aims are honourable, resonant, important, but their communication through this performance, which is, at times, comical, endearing, reflective and heartfelt — but perhaps only in its themes alone — is wholly questionable. Recurrently barely clad, Hall forces us to sexualise and eroticise his body, but also to see him as vulnerable and perhaps victimised, and this is intensified in the overture. During this, Hall regularly apologises for his disorderliness and lack of time management, expressing that he hasn’t been able to sleep from partying all night, as though he is as much of a ‘mess’ as his stage — more on this below. In theory, this is a very effective decision, forcing us to sexualise what is stigmatised and wrongly reputed as a ‘dirty’, ‘contagious’ and 'dangerous' body, one inextricable from sexual practices from which we, the average ‘righteous’ and ‘civilised’ onlookers, see ourselves as distinctly removed. In this sense, we are also then part of this victimisation, we are abusers, and are thus more susceptible to realising the depth and presence of this stigma when it is revealed to us later on, having been involved in it in this way ourselves. However, in practice...the result is incredibly sloppy and ill-communicated. Hall runs aimlessly around the house before the start of the performance, interacting, rather fecklessly, with every audience member in sight. Delivering to us nearly identical scripts, often consisting of some variant of "I haven't been to bed, have you?", Hall's interactions feel unnatural and forced, unnecessary and meaningless. Hall explained in the post-show Q&A that messiness was a recurrent theme in his life, that his relationship with mess was meaningful to him in the creation of this performance, and this is certainly perceptible in these disorderly interactions. However, whilst Hall seems to have a clear concept himself of what 'mess' means for him outside of the performance, his work here fails to communicate what 'messiness' means within it. Of course, one could relate this to the narrative we are presented, which sees Nathaniel in a hectic cycle of drug and alcohol abuse, sexual escapades and vomiting, as well as to his lack of agency and autonomy, but this does not help our reading, either, for these items themselves are just as precariously integrated into the performance. There appears to be no structure to guide us through the material and to marry the material together. It is clear that the seeds are all there for a discourse on the condition and its stigmas, but no thread exists to sew these elements together. We only arrive at meaning through our own extensive research into Hall's perspective ourselves. This mess, for example, just feels as though we are being presented with a messy and disorderly party-going character for the sake of it, not because mess holds any symbolic and psychic significance to Hall and thus to the performance. Similarly, Hall explains that his reason for portraying his diagnosis by presenting a caricature of his nurse was that he finds it difficult to relieve receiving this diagnosis, but this does not translate into anything meaningful on stage; it is simply a comical and exaggerative representation. Hall confuses what is beneficial for him as a performer with what is beneficial to the performance itself, and this is a classic case where an overintellectualisation external to the live work clouds the artist's perspective on what the work is actually doing alone. In this way, the narrative and content is left esoteric and beyond reach. Vomiting, drug use and parties are motifs that hold their own personal significance beyond our direct reading, and I would urge that Hall reconsider the personal symbolic significance of these aspects versus the significance, role and symbolism that they possess within the performance itself alone. I found that every single time material hovered around the virus, Hall resorted to humour, in performing anything from a small subversive joke to the melodramatic representation of reliance upon and abuse of drugs, seeing an exaggerated overconsumption of these. After carefully setting up somewhat of a memorial service, having audience members sharing votive candles amongst themselves in the now dimly lit house whilst footage of the real and the dying is projected onto a screen he has set up on stage, Hall then wittily remarks that we surely all need a tissue after watching that: “I’d give you mine, but it’s covered in snot.” This time allotted for our grief is so short-lived because of this, but, more importantly, any poignancy it held is subverted by this abject humour. We have barely finished watching the footage, the house is still dark, we are still in this 'safe' space that is rarely offered in everyday life, one that is, as Hall himself purports, glazed over, ignored, inaccessible, and yet here we are moving swiftly on again and in such a brusque and nonchalant manner. Here, we see that Hall's 'comedy' directly takes as its subject our sorrow but also our therapy, our catharsis, and this is a thorny decision. It is a form of comic relief from something that we did not particularly want to be relieved from, something that Hall has just spent time engineering to deliberately make us feel this sadness. This sadness, this sense of tragedy should remain and should fuel our change, our anger, our resilience; it should not be so readily appeased, brushed aside; it is the ammunition and motivation for and the cause of our activism for which Hall is calling. It is clear that Hall wants to offer himself and his public a form of therapy and that through this therapy we should surely be able to laugh and feel alleviated, but I am afraid that this therapy itself becomes the butt of an uncareful joke. This aforementioned melodramatic overconsumption, for example, is an aggressive and self-mocking overconsumption of HIV medication, with the added flavour of a bag of cocaine, and we are shown this right after Hall commends the advancements in relative pharmacology and medical science, namely with the conception of PrEP, which he recognises has revolutionised the life of those living, now unaffectedly, with the virus. Then, we have the “quiz” that aims to force us to reconsider the realistic probability of contracting the virus in various given circumstances. This is an excellent opportunity to actually re-educate and inform audience members — rather literally, but effectively nevertheless — and this is completely missed in Hall’s obvious and destructive ‘comedy’. By expressing to us that this quiz, as many other suchlike elements, will be informative and educational and will destigmatise and reverse assumptions about the virus, Hall prepares us for an authentic and enlightening lesson — something we understand to be at the very heart of this performance. However, when this quiz turns out to be completely unserious and actually rather ridiculous, the humour lies, in fact, in the subversion of this seriousness and in the subversion of our assumption of the integrity and nature of the quiz. By extension, this section is humorous specifically because it makes a mockery of the seriousness of our education about these matters. The information we are given on the caricatural archetypes we are presented is ludicrous, outlandish and exaggerative, and this lack of realism eradicates any sense of the transferability of newfound skills and lessons we have acquired here into our 'real' and 'everyday' life. We learn nothing, we challenge nothing. Hall does not destigmatise this issue with humour; he mocks the process of destigmatising itself, and this is most contradictory to his aims. And this is without mentioning that this is a poorly executed and terribly repetitive scene, regardless of its intent. Whilst I understand that this is a difficult territory for Hall, a profound performance about HIV should, quite obviously, be able to demonstrate that it considers HIV in a profound manner. I do not think this performance does. Hall fails to filter out what is unnecessary and unhelpful in making a sound, well-structured and articulate performance in favour of what he finds of personal interest and significance. Funny though it is, for example, what relevance to the play’s cause, aims and messages has calling a female-identifying audience member on stage to enact Nathaniel’s imaginary life with a wife and child, a gross extension of what is an otherwise negligible moment in the play — Nathaniel acknowledging a friendly girl at the school prom? This has nothing to do with the principal narrative and focus and yet consumes an enormous chunk of our time. Was this particular display comedic in itself? Yes, the audience member did wonderfully, and Hall proved himself as an effective semi-extemporaneous performer, having organised the actions they would do together wonderfully, and manoeuvred the unexpected obstacles presented by this audience member emphatically well. But did it progress our understanding of Nathaniel’s character, let alone of the play itself? No. Unnecessary, time-consuming and subtractive. I mentioned above that Hall infiltrates the house and interacts with the audience prior to the start of the show, and this is one example of the consistent use of metatheatrical techniques in this performance. This metatheatricality works against Hall. The aim, of course, as with these direct interactions, is to create a direct relationship with the audience so that they may recognise, better identify with and have access to the personal material Hall is presenting to us. This is a classic misunderstanding of metatheatre and its effects, as the only effect metatheatre can have is to distance the audience from the work in causing them to become distinctly aware of themselves, the space, their body, the body of the Other, and their role and function as an audience member who is conspicuously, and now consciously, watching a performance. The audience member does not become intensely engaged in the performance but intensely removed from it via their chronic self-awareness. Moreover, Hall actually insults his audience at the beginning of the performance, claiming them to be ‘judgemental bastards’. Very clever and formulaic contexts have to be conceived in order to make such insults feel 1) congruous, 2) welcomed, and 3) humorous. This context was not set up for us at all. Furthermore: as stated above, Hall regurgitates a variant of the same phrase to every audience member, meaning that his interactions are far too similar and unparticularised, which allows for a total obliteration of any intimacy and specialness or uniqueness we would have felt in the interactions we had with him. Clearly, Hall has not considered carefully enough what relationship he wants with his audience and what role they ought to play. This is without considering the agency he gives his audience in creating such an open environment — which would explain the consistent unsolicited shouting out and interjections from audience members in moments where audience interaction/participation was not desired. If the audience had comprised even more spirited individuals, these interjections could have been dire. More significantly, however, as well as demonstrating that Hall has not considered the function, role, effects and form of his metatheatrical techniques, constant references throughout to this being a performance, especially paired with his caricatural and rather exaggerative acting style, make for a stunting effect on our emotional response to the performance. We are so vehemently and deliberately forced away from feeling and sentiment, reminded of the artificiality of the space and of the performance, reminded that this is all just an act, and yet the desired outcome of this performance is somehow to force to feel, to be moved, to be incentivised?! The emotional response should be our catalyst for our desire for change, and it is not instrumentalised correctly or appropriately at all. And this is without mentioning that this performance is taking place in the UK, a country that has a particularly sterile yet serious cultural relationship with death. This relationship must be considered carefully, meticulously and sensitively when opening discourse on the deceased, especially on those that lost their lives in conditions such as those during the AIDS crisis. As a performer, Hall’s energy is faultless. He has an endearing onstage persona, but his caricatures and robotic writing style fictionalise his work to such a degree that it becomes inaccessible — emotionally and intellectually — and this is in direct opposition to his chosen metatheatrical performance style. With the incessant motifs of vomiting and drug abuse, with the time-consuming and needless wardrobe change sequences, with the excessive focus on incongruous humour, and with a style that ranges from third-person narratives to verse to caricatural re[-]presentation, the overall legibility of this performance is simply…nonexistent. A shambolic, confused and convoluted performance, however humorous or endearing sections may be. “A performance falling extremely far from its aims, inarticulate and unsure of its rhetoric.”

There are certainly some peculiar stylistic decisions in this performance that are altogether illogical, and incongruous with the rest of the material we are presented, and most of these are towards the beginning, setting us up for something rather different than what follows as a fluid, unbroken and, most significantly, enclosed representation. For instance, our introduction from Esteban (Nico Conde), as sweet as it is, is both structurally terribly predictable and stylistically inconsistent in that it offers us direct audience interaction, something we see nowhere else throughout the rest of the play. That is other than Steven’s (David Ames) short-lived aside to the same effect, where he ‘reintroduces’ us, with several flippant remarks, to the other characters after announcing his partner’s affair. And then the decision to re-present this scene to us with little alteration…but for what reason? Even more peculiar in this scene is the indecision as to whether the other characters should be frozen or moving; the actors simply cannot come to a unanimous agreement on this. The rotating set, upon which I shall elaborate below; the topographical inconsistencies that see in the same scenes some performers enter from backstage and others through the entrance to the house; the odd and seemingly irrelevant references to Stephen Sondheim and his music; and the caricatural acting style…all of these together make for a rather chaotic and incoherent performance, despite the rather somewhat structure [not material] of the narrative itself. Ignoring its staged version, the dramatic text itself holds great promise but is repetitive in its tone and content. Really, not much happens in this text, and great stage time is offered, instead, to long-winded conversations between the characters that seem to have no real or notable significance to the development of the plot and characters, other than to communicate their somewhat skeletal and unidimensional profiles. However, despite being a rather coherent text, regardless of its content’s oversimplicity, the principal issue is that its dialogue fails to replicate natural, especially conversational, speech, and this, in turn, affects how the actors portray it. Not a single character has an identifiable and unique manner of speaking, and the structure of each one’s speech is practically identical, hyperfocused on the bombastic and the satirical, the sassy, the sexual and the subversive. This is a problem. Whilst the intention behind this — if, indeed, it were a deliberate decision — may have been to create the sense of a collective identity, a shared bond, a unity, the effect is, rather, that all of the characters seem monotonal and undistinguished, i.e. disinteresting. This is especially notable given that we have such little access to the other characters, particularly Brian but even Stephen (Joe Aaron Reid). As each character lacks a certain and significant specificity — other than Carrie (Jane Russell) perhaps, with her illness, though even this is in danger of being stretched beyond its usefulness — or some fundamental crux to ground their identity and upon which their personalities can rely, there is very little to humanise these characters, and humanisation is important if our readings are to invoke feeling, empathy and a sense of having bonded with these ‘people’. I would certainly emphasise that the most successful element of this performance is the development of Carrie’s storyline, however. Her presence and witty speech type are by far the most established and the most particularised, and such detail and thought have gone into both her writing but also, and mostly, Russell’s excellent characterisation. Whilst great time is dedicated to the development of Carrie and Steven’s relationship, the stagnancy we are offered elsewhere in this performance means that their interactions with one another are surely the most memorable aspect of this performance. In fact, their relationship and Carrie’s terminal illness constitute the only emotional elements we are made to truly care about to some degree. Personally, I would have actually preferred a play that dedicates its entirety to their friendship, for this reason, as Steven’s life and storyline is simply far too understated and uneventful insofar as the writing itself. On to acting. I should clarify before starting this section that absolutely all performers perform in an overly caricatural manner, and this compromises credibility significantly and, of course, further intensely diminishes any potential emotional response from the audience. However, Russell and Ames remain sure of their characters and of their intents consistently throughout this performance. A few lines are delivered with questionable intonation from both sporadically, but, overall, great deliveries from these two performers. They have done excellent work on their characterisations, and it shows; their characters are immediately comprehensible and clear throughout. There is, however, a great sense of artificiality Russell’s portrayal of her character’s emotional breakdown. The abruptness of this is both conceived and handled well, but it is the further detailing from after the moment she lifts her head from her hands that Russell abandons any sense of truth. I would recommend this scene be reworked. Ames performs his character’s anger well, however, but remains rather one-note throughout his outbursts. Given how lengthy these outbursts are — I refer to the first, when he divulges his partner’s affair to us and the other characters, and to the last, where he ‘breaks down’ to Carrie, questioning his identity and circumstances — I would particularly recommend further inflections and tonal variation when his speeches become more bombastic, florid and verbose — not that these should be extreme or dramatic but certainly palpable indications of underlying emotion. As for the rest of the cast, Conde’s delivery needs significant work in terms of both vocal and physical expressivity. His character is certainly legible, but Conde lacks a great degree of vigour and vitality, from his encumbered jazz hands as the fake emcee at the beginning of the performance to his inappropriate and unnaturalistic intonation throughout. On the topic of the latter, Esteban’s entrances serve as moments of great comic relief, breaking the tensions between the other characters, and if Conde’s intonation is not appropriate for these quick and punchy throwaway “hello”s and “what happened?”s, then the impact of this comedy is altogether eradicated. Reid remains completely unbelievable throughout the performance, unsure of his role and character intentions, lacking any particularisations in his characterisation whatsoever, insufficiently energised, and unsure of the meaning and emotions behind his lines. Admittedly, he does improve significantly in the final scene, however, but here, we see him exaggerating as opposed to performing his role — and this is ineffective, given that we are not made to understand this role of his ourselves, rather leaving us with the question: this is an exaggeration of what, exactly? On the topic of exaggeration, screaming and extreme gesticulations do not equate to the representation of an inebriated partygoer, as evidenced by Giles Cooper (playing Brian) in the final scenes of the play. Even for such caricatural representation, we see no struggling eyelids, no wobbling, no slurring of the words, just plain and unparticularised shouting. A most obnoxious display, and not one representative of his loud and cocky character, either. On a similar note, we have Michael Walters (playing Matt) who remains constantly overly expressive throughout, culminating in this final scene where he, too, suffers from overacting: superfluous vitality and vigour and his over-pronounced and artificial manner of delivery get in the way of his credibility. A not particularly seasoned cast, then, demonstrating great energy but not the ability to channel it efficiently and intelligently. Ben Papworth performs in this performance as a pianist and proves himself to be most talented, playing with expert timing and precision. His inclusion into the performance is nonexistent, however, and, being our only true link to the late Steven Sondheim, to whom, again, this play is dedicated, his presence or, rather, his significance needs to be far better addressed. Even at the end of the performance, he receives no gesture from the performers as they take to their applause, which is most insensitive and discourteous if such an extravagant bowing, seeing each performer bow one by one and then together and all of them returning again for a second bow afterwards, has been organised. A great disservice. I would perhaps recommend also that Papworth find something with which to occupy himself when he is not required to play. He appears visibly bored and somewhat dejected, and this is both distracting and subtractive, though I cannot blame him for feeling removed both socially and emotionally from this performance. Set (designed by Lee Newby and constructed by Gemstage) is intimate and successfully evocative both of the settings of the play and the relative lifestyles of the characters. Though transitions take far too long for such little displacements, with stagehands seeming unhurried and casual but to an irksome degree, as opposed to seeming cooly efficient, the versatility and transformation of this set have been wonderfully conceived and executed, allowing for us to feel transported from location to location very distinctly. I must say, however, that to have audience members sit along the sides of the stage is a most terrible and subtractive decision — perhaps this would be acceptable if the entire play were set in this restaurant and if such aforementioned metatheatrical techniques were kept constant, but this is not the case — and that the revolving stage, handled by the Revolving Stage Company, is entirely distracting and ill-conceived. Actors regularly seem unsure of their footing, intensifying the revolve’s presence, and its use has no significant purpose, other than to benefit visual and technological appeal — although, this latter is rather compromised by the lack of smoothness in its operation, seeing it jar and stagger often. I think, for example, to the end of the café scene, where, upon Esteban’s return, Steven asks him what he’ll be doing after he finishes his shift. To have the entire stage revolve simply to have a second’s worth of a glimpse at Esteban’s — a tertiary character — reaction…is simply ridiculous. This is without mentioning the topographical issues this stage element presents: sticking with this same example, for instance, Esteban first enters from backstage, behind the sofa; when the stage is now revolved, he enters from in front of it. We have very little visual cues in this set design as to the topography of these locations, and to confuse the directions from which Esteban enters, our only topographical indications, is a terrible decision. Initially, the graphics in the frames along the three walls of the stage (video programming by Cowley) are congruous and additive, supplementing the set with detail and a sense of the characters’ lives, families, contexts and attachments. The decision to depict portraits of the characters along with their text message bubbles is also an effective idea, if a little on the nose, but I would urge Reid with reproach not to look at them as though he sees them like we do, for these are representations of the messages he receives on the mobile phone that he is holding in his hand and are not to be seen as real; it is to this mobile — and to his house phone — alone that he should be directing his attention. The cartoonistic designs that suddenly take to the screens — the repeating moving line animation of the cat, the string of fairylights, or, most peculiarly, the white line drawings superimposed upon the rather photorealistic depictions of a skyline — are most incongruous with the designs we have seen hitherto, confusing the aesthetic and mood of the play with declining seriousness and integrity. There are certainly other aspects of this performance that rather irk me, like why the sun is depicted to be rising after Steven has just informed us that he ‘and Carrie’ were waiting for the sun to set together — perhaps this was to indicate that the former [and soon-to-be-again?] couple stay together all night, but this is not clear at all, if this is the case — or why the actors, particularly Russell, insist on sitting at the Stage-Left bar to deliver their first few lines before joining the others seated Centerstage. However, overall, this remains a legible and coherent performance. What surprises me most, however, is this fact that all of this is somehow meant to be dedicated to the late Stephen Sondheim. The obvious prevalence of the name Steven/-phen, combined with random references to only a few of Sondheim’s songs, but predominantly Into the Woods [the writer’s favourite?], and yet no significance or symbolism to any of these whatsoever. The characters do not ‘know’ him, represent him, respect him, and yet all randomly have this shared vocabulary about his music and lyrics. The characters show no conspicuous interest in musical theatre throughout — other than Matt’s [ironic here] remark that Brian does not know anything about it — let alone Sondheim; just an expressed interest in cabaret, if anything. A most peculiar factor. “A sometimes endearing but mostly hammy performance.”

I found this performance very shallow… It feels as though the creatives simply needed a surefire way to obtain some money. Appropriating the well-known ‘classic’ film, Dirty Dancing, and upon it basing a purely sensationalist text to garner interest, hype and engagement, it seems, was the perfect means of doing this. This performance aims to titillate and arouse its audience, to prey upon fond memory through its vapid representationalism, and to instrumentalise physiological and emotional responses, all solely for shallow gain. For the reasons I will enumerate below, this remains a performance of low artistic integrity, a quick-release, low-effort play with songs, not a work of art by any stretch of the imagination. A completely superficial performance, substituting profundity and artistic creativity for frivolous cliché and caricature. I shall start with the writing (by Eleanor Bergstein). Plot elements seem to be rather brushed over, in favour of the humorous or the voyeuristic — I think to most scenes with Neil (Thomas Sutcliffe) wherein he attempts to woo Baby (Kira Malou) with his status and resources but is undone by his caricatural nerdy and goofy disposition, or, indeed, the hypersexual scenes between Baby and Johnny (Michael O'Reilly) themselves. The setup of the main plot itself, for example, where Baby is nominated to perform in the final dance and her lessons with Johnny are organised, is practically nonexistent — she is asked, she accepts, and we move on to the repetitive and provocative dance lessons that follow. During these lessons and throughout the entire performance, we see no palpable development in the relationship between Baby and Johnny beyond incessant physical touch, and our understanding of all of the characters and settings, beyond perhaps Neil and Johnny, is reliant on our pre-existing understanding of the film and its contexts. I think, for example, to the introduction of Millers itself. We are told that this is where the amazing dancing happens...and nothing else. We must guess the rest of its significance ourselves. What is so important about this location that should draw Baby so magnetically? Why should she care for poor pregnant Penny (Carlie Milner) and these people she has barely met, enough to ask her father to spare her £250 to give to them? We are provided with no understanding of Baby's character, intents and psychology. We are simply to accept these items as organic to the narrative. Even the reason as to why Johnny feels so deeply connected with Baby over the mere fact that she fought for him not to be fired is underexplained — would a singular act like this really change his entire perception of women and how they might use and abuse him? What are we made to understand about Baby that would force us to believe along with Johnny that her love for him is genuine, powerful, authentic? A few giggles at the touch of his ripped abs and a poorly executed practice dance together are not enough to validate their trust and relationship, I am afraid. As for the dancing itself, the crux of this performance, I remain rather underwhelmed again. Form and precision are certainly lacking across the cast, and whilst all physical motions are certainly carried through, conviction and impetus are consistently insufficient. It feels almost as though the cast are to some degree conserving their energy throughout the performance — perhaps for the post-show finale, which sees vastly improved and impressive skill [albeit too late], much to my surprise. Choreography, overall, is highly repetitive, and this is particularly true of the opening sequence. What I did find most energised and skilful, however, was the choreography of the first scene wherein we are introduced to the dancers at Millers. Choreography here is varied and expressive, and the topographical organisation of the dancers is splendid, balanced and attractive. To end this section, I should mention that I would certainly restrict the number of lifts background dancers perform, given that this is the most memorable aspect of the choreography in the film — which is clearly important, given the aforementioned representationalist nature of this performance. Either restrict them or make them less pedestrian: showcase and highlight deliberately what the other characters can do that Baby as of yet cannot, to intensify the intense work that she must endure. I rather wish that all cast members demonstrated the same technical awareness as Lizzie Ottley (playing Lisa) and Tito Suarez do consistently, and as Milner does, too, at times. Perhaps the tackiest aspect of this performance is the log-walking scene, seeing the re-inclusion of the initial drop with a captioned depiction of 'Mountain Lake Lodge' — which, I emphasise, should not be used as an opening curtain and a scenic backdrop, for this leads to semiotic confusion and destruction of illusion. This depiction, printed on the gauze part of the drop, acts as a frame through which to view the actors as they pretend to balance on the log. Whilst the log itself is cleverly conceived, a lack of corporeal expressivity, the unnatural lighting, and the far-too-thick gauze that obscures them too heavily make this scenelet rather dissatisfying. With this drop now functioning as an act drop, the gauze is again made opaque, and we are made to wait what should be a matter of seconds for the next scenelet to begin. However, it takes an atrocious amount of time for the next set to be assembled. Deciding to keep count some time into this waiting, I counted the passing of fifteen seconds, which is a lifetime in theatre, especially if only to be offered such a short-lived scenelet as the one that follows. Sound effects (sound design by Armando Vertullo) here, though authentically designed, are also ill-timed. It is such uncareful and imprecise aspects like these that lead me to this aforementioned sentiment that this is a slapdash quest for money and renown, as opposed to a thoughtful, intellectual and creative work of art. Whilst on this topic again, I shall consider briefly this voyeuristic aspect. From O'Reilly appearing with one less piece of clothing with his every entrance towards the middle of the first act, to the motif of dancing shirtless men, to the cast members bending over, away from the audience, to present their skimpily clad bottoms, and to the deliberate display of O'Reilly's unclad derrière, this is notably an erotic performance intended almost entirely for the androphilic gaze — and there is nothing ‘wrong’ with this, in essence. However, I find it most peculiar that immediately before presenting his nude buttocks, Johnny expresses his discomfort with women sexually objectifying him and using him for their sexual gratification. Yet, this subsequent cheeky act is a deliberately and encouragingly erotic one that permits and condones the act of voyeurism. His character is also allowed hereafter to be just as sexualised as before he revealed this fact to us. This lack of sincerity in line with Johnny's expression really allows for the sense that the creatives wanted to throw in this half-baked political message merely to add depth and feeling to Johnny’s character, to be merely representative of this development familiar to the film, and to give the illusion that their play itself has some sociopolitical focus and integrity. What it does, instead, however, is simply expose its exploitation of cliché passions and its ignorance towards the very sociopolitical themes that it pretends to advocate. This political type is simply instrumentalised for the skeletal development of plot and of character; it soon comes to mean nothing with the further excuses to prompt the audience to be insatiable sexual voyeurs. Prompting the audience to get up and dance, both early into the second act and during the finale, it is no surprise that emotional physiological responses are also instrumentalised in a similar way for mere sensationalist purposes. Acting. Whilst, as I have mentioned above, technical dancing skill is very limited across the cast, energy is notably faultless throughout. Each performer, with emphasis on O'Reilly and Sutcliffe, portrays their representational and caricatural profile well, though Milner performs her role with refreshing credibility, overall, I must add. In summary, the performers adapt to their roles well and capture excellently the vision of the writer and director, but the roles themselves are superficial and hampered, and thus, by extension, so is the representational acting. Set and tech. Whilst washes are certainly beautiful, leaning into a finely established aesthetic, spotlights remain a constant issue throughout with Valerio Tiberi's design. Even when performers are generally still, such as with Ottley during her quirky and precise rendition of 'Hula Hana', spotlights fail to stay in place, constantly shaking and struggling to focus on their subjects. Set design, though minimalist, is sufficient in demonstrating the locations of the characters' houses, the restaurant and Millers, but interstitial scenes are incredibly visually neglected. I should also mention that assembling the restaurant set seems, again, to be too great a feat for stagehands. Costumes (designed by Jennifer Irwin) lack variety but are well designed in themselves, but wigs are simply awful, overly artificial and plastic-looking. Props usage is inconsistent: they are overused in places — the restaurant scene, Jake (Lynden Edwards) and Marjorie's (Lori Haley Fox) golf sessions, Penny's filled fridge, etc. — and underused in others — the dance lessons, scenes taking place at Millers. Some final, pedantic notes referring to moments that together destroy illusion and complicate style, aesthetic, significance and structure. It should be decided whether or not we can see ensemble members grouped tougher, talking, dancing, etc., when we are supposedly in an enclosed setting from which we cannot observe them: from inside Penny’s house, for example. At times, ensemble members stay completely still, aiming not to draw attention to their gatherings; at others, they perform their actions slowly, stylistically; and at others, they continue dancing and chatting in mime as though performing a regular background scene. This must be addressed for the purpose of stylistic consistency. When Malou changes her costume, she must do so only once she has left the stage, not whilst in immediate view of the audience as she is running off Stage Right, to save herself some time. When characters are briefly commentating on the rest of the action on stage — the dances, for example — the speaking actors' physical activity must be increased, and a spotlight must light them well; otherwise, as is the case for this performance, the audience will have no idea where to look or, more extremely, which characters are even talking, especially early on in the performance. I must note that this is also true of the first restaurant scene in which all actors slow down as a blue wash takes hold of the stage and mutes their visibility. I have absolutely no idea what happened in this moment, for my eye had nowhere to rest across this flat visual, and because of the sheer lack of movement. I can only deduce that whatever happened at the table between these characters was needless to note, regardless. “Superficially sensationalist, erotic, and lacking in artistic integrity.”

To clarify, the performers use their own forenames for their ‘characters’ in this performance. Any inclusions of these forenames refer exclusively to these ‘characters’ that we are presented; any surnames refer to the performers themselves. For crediting purposes, surnames are also included in brackets when forenames are first mentioned. I shall start with the recognition that I personally really enjoyed this performance, but my critical and personal perspectives are two very different things. An official synopsis of this performance states explicitly, ‘1001 is a desperate plea for rest. […] The exhaustion you see on stage is not an act. Performers are subjected to routine-like repetition, exhausting themselves physically and mentally’. This performance is rather disappointing in this respect, as I can say with absolute certainty that these performers are NOT, by any definition of the word, exhausted — especially not ‘mentally’. I have done countless work with exhaustion, and if these performers can giggle amongst each other, completely unaffected by their work whilst heading home, relaxed and talkative after another fine day on the stage, they are certainly not ‘burnt out’ as they are elsewhere described. When complete silence and inaction befalls a performer after their work, when their body “gives up on them”, buckling, shaking and faltering as they try to perform even the most mundane actions during their performance, only then can this exhaustion be noted and sufficiently thorough for the creatives to make these claims. The aim of this performance is clearly to create and open a space that can demonstrate and expose the human body (and in some ways the human mind) in a state of extreme struggle, extreme exertion and, ultimately, collapse. As this is the primary objective of this performance, I cannot say that this was a successful or effective performance at all, despite how much I personally favoured it. Ironically, the only way I identified this ‘exhaustion’ — as this theme was, at least, identifiable — was through this very plasticity that the creatives deny, this artificial and deliberate representation of exhaustion. Instead, the main themes of this performance, I find, are physical labour and routines of labour, pressure, struggle, uniformity and comparison. Referring once more to the synopsis: ‘To survive in capitalism, work is essential, work is part of an identity. If you don’t work, you cease to be. Is there an alternative?’ This implied theme of physical labour is very successfully communicated, and this is good, considering this is a fundamental focus of this performance. The paper aeroplanes becoming a symbol and material product of this physical labour, to have them carelessly spilt across the stage, only then to have the culprit of this mess not help the [implied] labourer, is a wonderful symbolic expression, for instance. However, it is the latter part of this quote, ‘is there an alternative?’ that concerns me here. It is a question that is in no way addressed by this performance, and so to posit this question at all is most strange to me. The theme of uniformity is obvious, and so I shall not comment on this, but I will comment on yet another quote from the official synopsis: ‘[This performance] is an attempt to resist the exploitation, the routine and the weight of “required” success’. Success is certainly not illustrated in this performance at all, beyond Ruth’s (Mestel) speech that sees her compare herself to others and their successes, a speech to which I refer to again briefly below. I can only imagine, not perceiving this resistance or success in any aspect of this work, that this refers to moments when performers break away from the collective, such as during the dance routines or at the very end, when the rest of the performers have left the space as Ruth continues to wiggle her hips from left to right before us. These moments do not constitute a resistance against success…especially as there is no success evidenced by those who, in fact, complete the dance routine or leave the space, for example. As the audience, in order to understand the specific ‘success’ against which the performers are resisting, we need to understand that this success is, in fact, achievable and in what form this success is manifested: titular, financial, popularity, etc. Instead, this “breaking away” is merely a disruption of routine, which is not to imply that these performers are “taking matters into their own hands” and resisting, but, rather, that they have become fixated upon certain aspects of the routine they regularly endure, whilst others continue to progress — whilst other performers progress to the next steps, one stagnates. This is a mere exposure of the psychophysical relationship between the self and routines of labour, and this expression of mere progression and stagnancy should not be confused with the expression of success and stilted success or failure; there is a considerable nuance here. I will say, however, that this resistance is certainly perceptible in one of the first scenes, wherein the rest of the cast throw their glasses of water over Daz’s (Scott) head. This is certainly a resistance against the routine of her incessant weather speech, but this singular example alone is not sufficient to claim that this is a principal or significant focus of this text. In a similar way, the “zinging and zinging” routine the cast performs on Marta does not break routine but disrupt it, with each performer doing the very same thing but with significant changes to style and mood: one is forceful, the other playful, the other brusque. This is an embellishment of or variation on routine, NOT a resistance against it. The theme of comparison is signalled by various elements, but I shall give two examples here: 1) whilst clothes are almost identical in terms of colour, the forms of clothing (from jumpers to cardigans) differ from performer to performer; and 2) the performers directly compare themselves to others, whether this be Ruth’s aforementioned speech, or Marta (Šleiere) noting that she cannot fold the paper aeroplanes like the others are doing, because she has forgotten how, and asking for Daz’s support. This theme of comparison forces us to home in on the individual performers and to cross-reference them and their activities, and this intensifies differing performance styles that I feel confuse the reading and meaning of this performance. Šleiere is clearly more accustomed to character-based work than the others, as a certain “theatrical” profile and overexpressivity creep into her performance persistently. Her movements are emphasised, dramatic, forceful. This is then contrasted with Mestel’s almost lethargic performance. She is slower, not as invigorated; her movements are understated and lack the impetus of her counterpart performers; her delivery is stunted, lacking. It is clear to me that these distinctly different performance styles are not deliberate but unconscious and automatic, and this should be urgently addressed. There is also another theme, one of childhood. Perhaps conceiver/director Jana Aizupe’s line of work was related to work in schools or with children — I cannot be sure — but what significance in this performance that this theme beyond perhaps this is debatable. From dance routines to deliberate and careless mess-making, to eating sugar doughnuts and Hubba Bubba bubblegum, to Martha’s (Harrison) caricatural and childish profile that she extremifies towards the end of the performance, to incessant winging and, of course, the act of making the paper aeroplanes, the references to “childish activity” are constant. But childhood and childish activity seem to constitute merely a means of accessing and depicting the more important and more relevant themes I have enumerated above; they have very little to do with the performance themselves and allow for a confused and irrelevant subtext that communicates not just social pressure but inclusion, the unsocialised, the yet-to-be-institutionalised, inarticulacy, learning and egotism. This ought to be readdressed. Whilst I cannot comment conclusively upon set design, as the creatives were not able to secure the set they wanted on the night I saw this performance, I will say that a blank-canvas stage with a neutral back wall certainly sounds like an effective decision. It complements well the nature of this performance, concentrating our attention towards the bright-clothed ‘struggling’ bodies of the performers, the fundamental aspect of this work. However, theatrical properties, as wonderful an aesthetic these produce altogether and a function these have, are ill-handled by the performers. Throughout, I had a certain fear that the performers would slide upon the mess of spilt water and soggy, slippery sheets of paper and fall to the ground. And this fear was not one that had been invoked deliberately, an artistic one, one born of a great yet manufactured sense of danger caused by the products of their labour; it was merely a significant tripping hazard, one for which the performers had clearly not prepared, managing to steady themselves when almost slipping but still slipping involuntarily, nevertheless. Furthermore, objects like sheets of paper, or the bubble gum cases specifically, regularly fly towards the audience uncontrollably. These elements communicate that the performers have no profound awareness of the space, its topography and the items within it, and of their corporeal relation to these. Further training must be done to ensure this awareness is sharp and profound. Performers should not merely be going through the motions of the work as in rehearsal but experiencing and conscious of the work in its entirety at the time of performance. Overall, this performance falls away from the majority of its aims, and there is a clear lack of understanding on the creatives’ part as to what their work is actually doing, as opposed to what they intend it to do. There is a misalignment of meaning and purpose in this way. However, for what this performance is, and for the manner in which it is delivered, 1001 is most articulate and coherent. Performers, for the most part, are dedicated and confident. I would just recommend that all performance styles are made to be a great deal more relatable, and that creatives differentiate for themselves that which informs the creation of a work, i.e. what inspires it, from what the finished work actually signifies alone. “A good and rich performance but shaky in the conception and communication of its aims.”

NB: 1) Given the nature of drag performances, credits in this review are limited to the names of the on-stage personae we are presented. 2) This is a recurring performance, different every time it is staged; this review can only speak conclusively of the particular performance to which I was invited. This was a rather underwhelming performance, overall, but I shall start with the positives. Each performer has a distinct style and aesthetic; they have each clearly worked on these. In terms of performativity, Asia Thorne outshines all others with an astounding energy, vigour and vitality, expressivity and confidence. She demonstrates a wonderful corporeal control and articulacy and great talent. The most refined and articulate performance, though, comes from contemporary burlesque dancer Cleopantha. Everything from music choice to costume to narrative is slick in this performance. However, the delivery of her repertoire remains a substantial issue, and now I move on to negatives. Continuing with Cleopantha’s burlesque performance, movements such as licking her index finger quickly become easy and overplayed references, and her jumping into a splits is not only underwhelming in its poor execution but looks simply painful, not erotic. Her difficulty in tearing the main bulk of her costume away — rather the crux of her performance — unfortunately demonstrates an unrefined skill, also. These elements ought to have been better rehearsed. It seems at the moment that Cleopantha is simply relying on the magic of a live audience and stage to gift her with vigour and precision. Despite these items, however, choreography does remain impactful and effective in itself, overall. As for Mahatma Khandi, this performer has wonderful facial and upper-body expressivity, especially in solo performances, but I emphasise that such expressivity is restricted to the waist upwards. Her movements are also incredibly repetitive — which will be an exhausting running theme in this review. I think, for example, to her rendition of ‘A Thousand Miles’ by Vanessa Carlton, wherein she simply plays an air piano for almost the entirety of the song’s duration, pointing — supposedly — at two audience members every so often to perform a flirtatious or hypersexual gesture, and doing nothing else of interest. I write ‘supposedly’, because she does not actually fix her gaze or the target of her pointing on any given audience member whatsoever, and what is intended to be a self-mocking moment of intimacy between spectator and performer is lost in a vapid caricatural allusion. During initial performances, we see Dosa Cat regularly enter the stage, overtly intending to upstage Mahatma and steal her limelight. This is incredibly poorly executed, with Dosa being weakly ‘carried’ back off, putting up a half-baked fight. This happens over four times, making this yet another sorely repeated motif. This is also a great example of the sheer lack of corporeal and muscular awareness, tension and expressivity from which most of these performers suffer — I say ‘most’, as this does not reflect Asia Thorne. This is a completely unrealistic and half-hearted display, and to have such a weak ‘joke’ repeated so many times exacerbates this effect, or lack thereof. I should note here, too, between considering Mahatma and Dosa’s performances, that all performers — again, except for Asia Thorne — struggle to mouth the words to their songs in sync, or to ‘lipsync’ accurately, to use the appropriate terms. This is incredibly distracting, illusion-shattering, underwhelming and unprofessional. This is, after all, at least a third of these performers’ respective acts. Ironically, despite this accuracy I have attributed to Asia, her lipsync-ing is far too performative, making for a stark contrast against the other performers: she is overexpressive to an unbelievable and almost desperate degree. On to Dosa Cat. With such a big lead-up to their performance and with such acclaim from fellow performers, I would have expected a great deal more from Dosa. As I shall elaborate below, Dosa’s performance overrelies upon the audience’s pre-existing knowledge of cultural references and forms, as with their quote-heavy text that simply sees them walking from the centre to the front of the stage, pause, mouth [again, out of sync] along with their audio, pointing out to the audience with a sassy and confrontational gesture, and then returning to the middle of the stage. Oh, and a sheepish, stiff lap dance on an unsuspecting [and clearly rather uncomfortable!] audience member, just for the added sensationalist effect. Again, a promising aesthetic from Dosa, but performance is just incredibly lacking. It seems that the mere presence of a drag performer in and amongst the audience members is what makes Dosa’s next performance so exhilarating, as it most certainly is not their repertoire, expression and variation. As written above, Asia Thorne is an excellent performer, expressive, vitalised, skilled. Contrastingly, whilst it is clear that she has a very varied skillset to showcase, her solo performances do not do this fact justice. Again, I shall elaborate on intertextual references below, but Thorne’s solo act is so littered with audio clips and music changes that it becomes an overly fragmented and bipartite display, attempting to incorporate everything in such a way that it really ends up being about nothing. Narrative is completely lost, and the jarring audio seems to inspire a jarring physicality, with movements left half-finished, interrupted by the next auditory material. Prinx Silver suffered from perhaps the greatest lack of impetus and full-body articulacy, which was most disappointing. I can honestly say that I do not know what I learned about this performer or their performance style, because structure and repertoire were pretty much nonexistent beyond ‘serving face and body’. Whilst Prinx has clearly mastered appearance-based illusionism, as I mentioned in the introduction to this review was the case for all performers, this was clearly not their main objective, judging from the attempts at upside-down splits or the narrative-based[?] vicar costume. Furthermore, strumming a balloon as though a guitar and smouldering for an entire song in their next performance alongside the majority of the cast rather loses its appeal and effect, I am afraid, within the very first of three minutes during which this is done. There seems to be an anti-religious theme throughout the collective’s history, referenced by Mahatma herself and, of course, demonstrated in this, Prinx Silver’s first, solo act. This satire would be better welcomed and comprehensible if its relevance, quality and nature were better communicated. Simply entering in a vicar’s outfit and launching a bible and crucifix into the house is not enough to consolidate a working narrative. Similarly, there seems to be an enormous overreliance upon intertextual knowledge throughout this performance, from these satirical religious exploitations to the sassy voiceovers of memes and TV shows, etc., to the popular songs that accompany performances like Asia Thorne’s. Intertextual features are perfectly acceptable, but they should complement and progress the performance, not replace, hinder or outshine it as they do regularly throughout this instalment of Khandi Shop. The rendition of High School Musical’s ‘Bop to the Top’, for instance, or Dosa, Mahatma and Asia’s performance of various songs from Sister Act — again, odd religious themes — have no relevance to the rest of the show whatsoever. They are not introduced at all, integrated well into the programme of the show, or reflected upon afterwards. We are simply to accept these random performances as sensical and fitting. They are not. I must admit that I was incredibly surprised to learn that this performance labels itself as an ‘evening of tooth ache inducing cabaret [sic]’. I cannot begin to fathom what the creatives think High School Musical and ‘A Thousand Miles’ have to do with cabaret… And as for ‘tooth ache inducing [sic]’, I recognise the title of this performance and Mahatma’s ‘surname’ but still have no clue whatsoever as to where the theme of ‘candy’ has gotten to in this performance… Scavenging fruitlessly for any sign whatsoever of how these elements have been worked into this cabaret-less cabaret, I must say that I find it rather headache-inducing, more than anything else… “A shambolic performance; repetitive and in desperate need of structure and theme.”

Overall, this is a rather sensationalist performance, relying on its characters’ conflicting points of view and life experiences to confuse the audience; its stylised sequences to add flare and mystery, and to communicate the non-physical aspects of Kayode’s (Fode Simbo) curse; and its [erroneous] metatheatrical techniques to “launch the audience into the narrative”. It remains, however, a humorous and light performance, despite the nature of its material, and this is due to its caricatural representations from its endearing performers and to its witty cultural references. I shall begin with writing. Themes of denial are certainly very poignant in this performance, from Layo (Lucy Vandi) denying Kikiope’s (Teri Ann Bobb-Baxter) access to her heritage and to tacit cultural knowledge, to the disbelief aimed at Pastor Matanmi (Mark Springer) for his methods and wisdom, to the characters’ denial of Kayode’s lived experiences and perceptions. Truth, in this way, is instrumentalised in a most mind-boggling manner, to interrogate, challenge and obscure the real and the subjective, the physical and the spiritual. Dialogue is actually rather well written, and scenes are structured well, but content is rather repetitive, overall. There are many scenes that deal with similar issues, especially those wherein we see Kikiope coaxing Kayode to lead as normal a life as possible, despite his current state, and those wherein Itan (Selina Jones) is constantly being resurrected — supposedly, much to our surprise, but, in reality, this becomes most predictable. These ought to have been either cut by director Taino Lawson completely, embellished and deepened, or simply replaced with refreshing and altogether different material. This variation is desperately needed to enrich this text, I feel. On to acting. This is certainly a talented cast, showing great promise and good ability, but there is a certain lack of particularisation and skill across all performers. I shall start with Bobb-Baxter. This performer seems to have a background in spoken word, sporadically and randomly altering her delivery to perform in an overly stylised and poetic manner, entering into a persona different to that of her ‘principal’ character. To mark such ‘altered’ deliveries, we see Bobb-Baxter extend her hands forward slightly and becoming robotic in her movements and speech. She seems to latch on regularly to the poeticism underlying her lines and delivers this accordingly, instead of delivering her lines with a naturalistic approach that better reflects the intentions and circumstances of her character. Of course, doing this latter would produce the desired poetic effect on its own. Bobb-Baxter does, however, have a great ‘coolness’ on stage, and performs with great attention to timing and delivery. Her attention is concentrated wonderfully on other cast members; great thought has been given to her engagement with them. I would just favour more expressivity and urgency in places, and, again, a more focused and steady expression of her character’s intentions, psychology and circumstances, as opposed to her character’s mere feelings and external responses to stimuli. Selina Jones performs with an excellent corporeal awareness, moving fluidly and attentively. Her movements are precise, calculated and conscious. Certainly, Jones proves her skill in physical expressivity and malleability. When it comes to the delivery of her lines, however, we see, again, a characterisation intending to incite reaction and to produce effect, not a naturalistic or relatable representation by any means. Jones has a palpable talent but further skill is needed to sharpen intonation and expression to better equate her portrayal to natural human behaviour — which must still be palpable and discernible despite her portraying a spirit, especially as this spirit is chiefly humanised within this text. Notably, the dramatic and the stylised come naturally to this performer, as with her coughing blood or with her stylised movement routines with Simbo. Out of the cast, Jones is the most particularised and refined when it comes to her characterisation, and her constant busyness and preoccupation — arranging candles and flowers, reading books, and spectating and reacting to the motions and conversations of the other characters — bring great richness to the physical and external aspects of her character. However, vocal expression is mechanical and too heavily reliant upon convention. Simbo lacks a great amount of corporeal tension when this is necessary — I think to his getting out of of the water pit or to the ‘motifs’ in his stylised movement solos that I shall detail below — but his delivery is certainly the most credible of the cast. He is clear on his character’s intent and objectives, and this is conveyed through a clear and credible characterisation. Though his movements and delivery do gradually become rather repetitive, I can safely blame this on the monotony of his character as it is written. He has, however, found a good deal of variation in his activity in the water pit. Springer presents a wonderful and humorous caricature, with an incessant vitality, and with great thought to his character’s idiosyncrasies. His profile is in danger of becoming too caricatural and artificial in relation to the more understated acting style of the other performers, however. It is also in danger of becoming rather one-note, as I find it does from his scene alone with Bobb-Baxter, upon which I shall also elaborate below. Vandi, on the other hand, rather underplays her character, with few idiosyncrasies and observable traits. She does, however, have a good grip on naturalistic delivery, overall — perhaps the best of the performers in this way, alongside Simbo [but this is still far from exemplary]. In terms of stylised movements (movement direction by Robin Milliner), Simbo’s motifs — seeing him extend his arms above his head after freezing mid-movement, his leg stopped in its sideways motion as though he were about to turn — are too repetitive, I find, and this lack of variation is something typical of all stylised interactions, including Simbo’s fights with Jones (directed by Yaris Dor). Mirroring movements, for example, such as when Jones lifts and bares the palm of her hand for Simbo to copy her, quickly becomes commonplace in this performance, and this is without mentioning that such a practice is most unoriginal and cliché. I would have liked a more creative and inventive demonstration that Itan is within and one with Kyode’s body and that she is governing it, beyond this implied puppetry. The use of disruptive metatheatrical techniques is most questionable in this performance. Yet again, I find a classic example of misuse. Jones directs a monologue to both Simbo and the audience, claiming that she is a positive influence, a beauty, questioning us, “Right? Right?!” The desired effect here is clearly to engage the audience, to get them thinking about their relation to and perception of this spirit, to intensify the dangerous and threatening quality of it in the realisation, upon the ‘breaking of the fourth wall’, that the spirit is unpredictable and can perhaps even affect us. Of course, the real effect is that the audience simply becomes aware of the artificiality of the performance, of themselves in relation to the space, to the performers and to those around them. Indeed, the audience is, rather, taken out of the performance, distracted by its now-exposed mechanical and artificial aspects, by the procedures of experiencing a piece of theatre. This is intensified when we later find that the performers are amongst us, scattered around the house. Not only does this obscure the view of the action for the audience members sat directly beside/behind these performers, but this is also incredibly confrontational in its breach of the audience’s territory. Again, this does not cause an audience to feel ‘part of the action’ but simply aware of their function as an audience of a theatre, especially given that they must be deliberately ignored by these in-role performers. Except, strangely, they are not entirely ignored elsewhere. Performers often face the audience when delivering their lines, and this makes for a great stylistic incongruity: for example, in their first scene together, whilst Vandi plays to Bobb-Baxter, Bobb-Baxter plays to the audience, as though we are Layo. But Layo is clearly not in front of her but beside her, and this confuses topography to an illegible degree, especially considering that Bobb-Baxter then turns to Vandi to continue her delivery later on — so who was she directing this speech to previously? The answer cannot be ‘us’, the audience. Most confused topographical and stylistic decisions. Now, set (designed by Rosie Elnile). Aesthetically, this is a beautiful design, and it is also an articulate one alongside that of the costumes (supervised by Rianna Azoro) and props, with their symbolic focuses. For example, to have Itan surrounded by flowers and candles, and to have her reading ‘All About Love’ by Bell Hooks and later dressed in a bridal gown with a fabulously long-trained white durag, is a wonderful manner both of presenting this spirit, whose virtuousness, beauty and positivity we are made to question, and of romanticising and prettifying what is elsewhere presented to us as a negative, underhand and occult aspect of ‘regular’ Nigerian practice. Although, I do not think that this spirit should have access to such common physical objects as this book; this demystifies and humanises her too significantly. Another successful symbolic element to this set design is the water pit in the centre of the stage, water obviously being symbolic of cleansing, of ritual, and of the source of life — this latter is most notable, given that this spirit is later thought of in the same way, to a significant degree. This water pit is used particularly effectively after Kyode and Itan’s final fight where we see Jones’s body floating lifelessly on the surface of the water for a great duration of time, her face obscured by the rest of the stage. This is handled expertly by Jones. However, Simbo and [especially] Jones’s erratic splashing sends vast amounts of this water flying towards the lanterns on either side of the stage — predominantly those Stage Left. This is incredibly dangerous and ought to be reconsidered. These lanterns are particularly ineffective, regardless, and so a simple solution would be to remove these altogether. Overall, lighting design (by Ciaran Cunningham) is beautiful in this performance, despite its needless complexity in places, and sound design (by George Dennis) is crisp and facilitative. “A coherent and fun performance but dampened by needless caricature, sensationalist elements and a lack of variation.”

This is a wonderful and endearing play performed by talented budding actors. A definite treat. All three actors have a great command over their roles, aware of their characters’ intentions, feelings and objectives, and supplementing each with wonderful idiosyncrasies, peculiarities and traits. There is, however, quite a significant lack of naturalism in their performances, which is a skill that will doubtlessly come with time, but this does see a great deal of inappropriate delivery. I shall not provide an exhaustive list of examples but just one: after an argument between Omz (Francis Lovehall) and Bilal (Kedar Williams-Stirling) about how Bilal is “always cappin’”, Bilal replies with, “Now you’re cappin’!” This should be delivered with the emphasis on you’re, as this refers to this recent argument; Williams-Stirling, however, places his emphasis on the word ‘cappin’’. Moments like this are constant throughout and need to be addressed. Externally, these performers have solidified their roles well, but further attention must be given to intent during delivery. Comedic moments, however, are handled expertly and with great precision — I think to Emeka Sesay’s (playing Joey) quick cheeky protrusion of the tongue when Joey is commended by Omz for his ‘standing up against Bilal’, or to the portrayal of Joey and Omz’s explosive derision of Bilal, mocking him as he denies his love interest in a girl. The performers’ excellent expressivity and vigour are most useful in moments like these. As for the dramatic text itself, this is a very poignant and resonant text, dealing with gentrification, systemic change and the upheaval of homes and symbolic and physical territories. To present this through the eyes of a trio of teenage boys trying to navigate their perspectives and those of their friends whilst also trying to establish and settle into their oncoming futures is a most refreshing and fruitful context to offer us. Characters are wonderfully developed, and each has a clear psychology, traits and particularised desires. Tensions between the characters, particularly towards the end of the play, are also structured and built wonderfully. I would just pay attention to excessive attempts at communicating culture and dialect: having ‘bro’ at the end of every sentence is one example of such superfluity and of a stark and undesirable deviation from natural everyday speech patterns. Stylistically, this is an unsteady performance, seeing a clunky mixture of enclosed action, direct audience address and stylised movement. I shall start with this latter, seen only in transitions. These transitions are completely different stylistically to the rest of the performance, not only in consideration of this movement type but also of the harsh blue/white washes that flood the stage (lighting design by Ali Hunter) and the R&B songs that are played overhead (sound design by Khalil Madovi). The contrast is stark, and we need time as an audience to settle into this new context, but sufficient time is simply not permitted. Sound is cut prematurely, lighting snaps back to its original state, and the actors continue as though nothing has happened. This is an example of a frustrating theatrical convention where creatives intend to invoke a sense of climax, with these tense and dramatic sequences sandwiching each and every scene. These transitions should be re-examined, and timing should be reconsidered. Sound should fade appropriately and not finish suddenly mid-lyric. There is only one effective transition in this performance, as regards stylistic fluidity, and this is after we are presented with a sequence wherein Omz imagines himself as a successful football player. Standing Centerstage, lit by a fading spotlight, Lovehall is still as the music fades, and Sesay slowly approaches, easing him out of his fantasy. This is most successful. An exemplary movement from stylised transition to naturalistic performance. I should note: this is not to say that the material with which we are presented in these transitions is not successful in itself; it certainly is and reveals those inner, personal objectives and desires of our much-beloved characters. I have an issue solely with style and presentation. In fact, these stylised movements, for the most part, are wonderfully executed by each of the performers, each having a great corporeal awareness and excellent expressivity. Their abundant energy and vitality make the busier transitions — seeing Lovehall and Williams-Stirling, in particular, running across the stage or enacting their training — all the more appealing. Lighting and sound designs are also faultless here; it is merely how we move from one state to another that is fallible and unrefined. As I have written countless times, metatheatre does not engage the audience in the world of the play; instead, it forces them to consider the artificiality of the performance space and their relationship to it and to other audience members. As soon as the performance is “opened up” to the audience, they become intensely self-aware and detached from the material. Any audience member during this party scene, which sees the trio interact excessively with the audience, would have certainly felt connected with the performers, but not their characters. Such a disruption of an otherwise completely enclosed narrative leads to a semiotic and stylistic disconnect. This is not warranted or useful in this performance, nor is an apologetic gesture to an audience member who has just been lightly nudged with the football — however, extra measures should be taken to make sure that this does not happen again, for this breaches the separating border between the performance space and the audience’s territory, to no end but severe distraction. With such effort having gone into pretending to be unaware of the audience as they enter during the overture, these scarce but severe moments of direct address are all the more questionable. I should mention here also that the performers handle this overture incredibly well. For well over fifteen minutes, these performers remain engaged in their respective activities, busy and preoccupied. This is most commendable. In terms of the set (designed by Amelia Jane Hankin), its simplicity is most facilitative and effective, communicating not only the concrete brutality of the characters’ hometown but its pre-development ‘stagnancy’ or stasis as well. To have the entire performance set on the pitch is most symbolic and evocative of our characters’ fixations, and this is intensified by the final symbol of the worn-down, half-deflated football that sits Centerstage in a shrinking spotlight at the end of the performance — a beautiful image. Other minimal props and elements are just enough to allude to the world beyond the pitch, such as the graffiti around the low walls of the stage, or the Morley’s takeaway bag. However, I would just recommend further detailing: a light touching of oil to add realism to this bag, for example, or carvings into the bricks and further weathering to add texture, age and even more history. A final note: this flat and vacant stage allows for a great facilitation of physical activity and for a heightened focus on the characters swamped by their hometown’s imagined expanse. Overall, very successful visuals here. “A gripping, endearing and resonant performance; definitely a must-see!”

This is a very rocky performance, failing to juggle astutely its various subplots and sociopolitical/cultural themes. From families ripped apart by war to homophobia to children navigating their parents’ separation, there is a LOT going on in this performance, which is most promising on paper but rather disappointing in execution. I shall start with acting. These actors each perform with faultless energy throughout and are clearly recognisant of their character’s intentions and objectives. However, naturalism does not come easily at all to these characters who seem unable to emulate natural speech patterns and physical human behaviour. Andrei Maniata (playing Amir) is perhaps the most refined in terms of his acting style, yet perhaps this is because his character hardly says anything...as when the time finally comes for his lengthy monologue about his personal history during the ongoing war in Syria, any credibility is totally thwarted by an exaggerative and overdramatic outpour. I would recommend extensive work be done so that these actors’ performances might be remotely convincing. Taofique Folarin (playing Roland) has obviously given extensive thought to the external appearance of his character, emoting well in terms of expression and physicality. However, his vocal expressivity is incredibly flawed, with almost every line being delivered with the same intonation and intensity. Overall, his performance is robotic in this way. Though partly caused by a significant issue in writing, which I shall address below, Kaine Hatukai (playing Gary) fails to shift fluidly between emotional states, suddenly bursting into rage, for example, with no perceptible lead-up, corporeal tension or appropriate behavioural changes. He could also benefit notably from incorporating the behavioural and vocal 'essence of a 'teenager' into his portrayal, as the profile he offers us is slightly too collected, especially given how emotionally unstable his character is supposed to be at the thought of his parents' separation. However, I must note that he performs tenderness very well, indeed. Maniata's portrayal, as I have already written, is rather credible until his lengthy monologue, but the extremely nervous individual that we see early on in this performance completely vanishes by his second appearance. In this respect, Maniata's profile is incredibly inconsistent. The more extreme moments must be reworked to avoid overdramatic flailing and unnatural wailing and to concentrate on portraying more realistic moments of breakdown, terror and collapse. Folarin and Maniata each perform the stylised movements rather well, with Folarin, in particular, demonstrating a great fluidity in his physicality — and perhaps a background in dance? Given how well these are executed, my issue here lies, rather, with not just choreography but the significance and integration of these movements themselves. The decision to represent the 'couple''s sexual encounters through stylised movement sequences is a peculiar one, given the stark absence of stylised expression elsewhere in this performance, and one that could, at least, be more attractive if choreography was not so repetitive and…in places…just strange. There are countless lifts of the limbs that feel out of place and awkward, and the second sequence we see is practically identical to the second. A slow, semi-animalistic encircling prowl, then to the floor for the performers to arch their backs whilst sat on one another [a series for which the audience's view has clearly has not been considered, with almost every audience member beyond the first row visibly straining to see whatever is obscured by the members in front], then some 'leg play', and back up again for what I shall refer to as Folarin's standing worm dance. Again, odd and repetitive, and not 'odd' in a way that draws out the unique and special in their relationship; just 'odd' as in clunky, awkward, unappealing. In fact, I find the very notion of their sexual encounters strange in itself, given how Roland pursues and perceives some kind of sexual chemistry with Amir, despite the circumstances they find themselves in: terrified by the sound of helicopters to the point where he has micturated uncontrollably, suffering from PTSD and implying a desire to be left alone does not make for the grounds of a particularly erotic and impassioned love story. Amir is also clearly uncomfortable, for various reasons that are later divulged, during sexual interactions with Roland, yet he is pursued, regardless. Somehow, we are meant to see this as a heart-warming tale of gay love? This is only worsened by the age gap, which is not posed as an issue until Gary implies that this is perhaps the very thing that has drawn them together, which would make quite a lot of sense in light of the lack of magnetism elsewhere between the two. Roland is not particularly loving but overly tactile and rather pushy, and I fail to see why the creatives would think this is a story with which one could profoundly connect. And this is without mentioning the dysfunctionality we experience through their physical altercations. These items simply are not congruous with Roland's character, a loving father who, really, rather has his life together at the age of forty. I believe the characters of this play are also difficult to identify with due to the severe and extremely rudimentary manner in which they are presented. For example, trembling at the passing of every helicopter, frenzied by the loss of his watch, furtively disappearing after every scene, falling to the floor with fear at every possible moment — and somehow cured of all anxieties after merely recounting his story to Roland... It is simply too monotonous and monolithic, not to mention slightly overdramatic in its unnuanced presentation. We do not need so many expressions of fear; we need humanity. This sense of rudimentariness and repetition is also palpable in Gary's character and in his relationship with Roland. Gary's constant...winging, for lack of a better word, that Roland left him and moved away, constantly asking him why he did it — which is all rather strange, considering that he already knew about his father's sexuality and reasoning behind his departure — and his begging him to come back becomes extremely monotonous and predictable. These supposedly 'deep' conversations, or rows, with his father seem to come out of nowhere and offer little to no variation each time. Overall, very little happens in this text (written by Bren Gosling), and anything that does progress the plot or develop our characters is wrung dry through constant regurgitation of unchanging information and material. A weakly written text, bland and failing to consider neither momentum nor fluid progression and climax. In terms of set (designed by Justin Nardella), the ‘deconstructed’ and minimalist design of the door frames, though attractively designed in itself, does not coincide with the busy and rather naturalistic set piece and prop arrangements we see in the bijoux room Downstage Right and around the main stage. Furthermore, actors seem to forget that their characters should not be able to see through the imagined walls around these, as when Roland, a regular perpetrator of this, watches Maniata changing or Hatukai playing the violin. Great attention has been given to areas the cast rarely enter or furniture that they rarely interact with, and then, there is the blunt and brutal folding bed chair and the overly eclectic, chaotic basketball court / lounge / bedroom. As I mentioned before, Roland seems, through various superficial implications, to be doing rather well for himself, all things considered, and if he has a spare bedroom for his son to stay in — which negates his claims that he does not have enough space for Gary to come and live with him... — I imagine his own bedroom would be equally adequate. It is not represented thusly. Finally, I must also comment on the bulky lights that are attached to the phones Folarin and Hatukai hold whilst portraying their characters' FaceTime conversation. These are far too unrealistic. To simply have the phone display a bright white screen would have been far better than these unrealistic and bizarre-looking attachments, given that this is not how phones light the face during such video calls and that the screens of these mobiles are quite noticeably switched off. This is without mentioning the fact that Gary notes that his father is holding the camera too close to his face, providing him with a clear view up into his nostrils, yet Folarin holds the phone in no such fashion and, in fact, holds it exactly as Hatukai does. These little details are those that gradually amount to complete destruction of illusion and subtraction from credibility and realism. “Chaotic, unstructured, ill-conceived, crude.”

This is a bold and poignant performance, written by Benny Ainsworth and directed by Sally Paffett, whose dark material is organised, in theory, very well. However, there is significant work to be done with performance style and, to some degree, with the writing as well, so that themes be conveyed better beyond the mere written word. Michael Parker’s performance style as Stuart is markedly caricatural. He is over-expressive and over-energised, and his style is rather overtly comedic, overall. Initially, this is a wonderful way to enable the audience to bond with his character. That everything is going wrong for him, from technical omissions to extreme nervousness, and that he is clearly being subjected to this performance by his mother are wonderful means of allowing for a sense of victimisation from the outset. We pity this character who brings us joy and laughter, and this is an excellent ground for invoking our extreme empathy later on when material gets darker — in theory. However, because of how extreme Parker’s caricatural acting style is, because of how artificially and theatrically his character is portrayed, it becomes incredibly difficult to empathise with this somewhat inhuman character, to gauge the level of realism in the text, and, ultimately, to digest this dark material. We go from one extreme, caricatural comedy, to the other, dark realism, and a lack of naturalism, of credibility, builds an extreme and thick barrier against our ability to see the human, the real, the raw and, most importantly, the possible, the enactable, the dangers that exist in the real world. Furthermore, this nervousness, characterised by incessant shaking, fluctuating voice, unsteady eye contact and overall ‘jitteriness’, is too severely overplayed at the beginning, given how conscientiously and accurately Parker portrays Stuart enacting the rest of his performance. Stuart’s final breakdown, which, I must say, would be significantly more effective if eye contact was directed not merely to the vague centre of the audience but to each and every audience member specifically as he addresses us, is incredibly intense and rather expertly achieved. The design of sound and tech — again, noting Stuart’s further victimisation in the lack of diligence of “Simon”, the [fictional] tech operator who receives his mother’s relentless support — is immaculate here, accentuating an extreme discomfort. However, the real tech operator, Ben Sorab (also the designer for all technical constituents), rather restricts its effect in allowing for a sense of predictability, audibly rustling in physical preparation in the tech booth and overtly preempting the lighting change by slightly altering the current state with a minor fade before the actual transition. This state must remain completely untouched until the time comes for it to drastically transform. This drastic sense was not achieved where it otherwise could have been because of these facts. On the topic of tech, I will quickly note that the principal lighting state maintained throughout the majority of this performance ought to be a full wash rather than an unfocused spot. Wearing white, Parker’s costume is garishly illuminated on one side of the stage and poorly lit along with Parker himself on the other. This is visually rather jarring — and the idea that this is down to Simon’s lack of skill is not enough to justify what is our entire visual in reality. I mentioned that Stuart’s character was also comedic, and exactly how this comedy is delivered also needs to be addressed. It is performed too deliberately by Parker, and this is further exacerbated by the character of Stuart’s own tendency towards comical lines — for example, his tango/line-dancing joke or the failing Brigitte Jones joke he delivers on behalf of this mother. These are acceptable alone, but not with further conspicuous stress on comedic idiosyncrasies and text. For maximum effect, comedy should not be delivered with the overt desire to make the audience laugh; this is counter-productive and, frankly, embarrassing. Simon should perform the comedic material not with the desire to extract the ‘funny’ out of the text and perform it but simply to stay true to his character’s intentions and circumstances. This sense of true conviction and seriousness will be the credible driving force for comedy, as opposed to the overreliance upon the punchlines he delivers themselves. One good example of this is at the beginning of the performance when Stuart spills his glass of water over his front. This action is far too preempted, and instead of ‘missing his mouth’, Parker simply breaks from the action of drinking and throws it over himself. This is too deliberate, artificial and not at all credible; hence, the comedy is weakened here. I should also mention here that white, under the harsh stage lights, is certainly not desirable for any costume that will at some point be made wet. This is not a matter of whether the performer is confident enough with exhibiting himself but, rather, about the undesired and distracting aspect and visual connotations this needlessly brings to the performance. I would recommend a different colour. Comedy is also slightly weakened by the repetition of certain elements, namely: Stuart leaving the stage to ‘talk to his mother’, his calling out to signal tech cues and freeze-framing whilst he awaits them, his interjections to provide us with superfluous details on characters and his circumstances, etc. On their own, these are managed and delivered excellently but together make for a sense of monotony and unimaginativeness. I would recommend more variety here. Otherwise, this is a good performance from Parker who remains vitalised and invigorated throughout. He successfully differentiates his various characters, demonstrating his great capacity as a transformative actor. He has wonderful corporeal and vocal expressivity and has a confident and bold stage presence. A good performer, and this is intensified by the recognition that he is alone on a bare stage, aided only by one lighting state throughout and yet manages to capture his character and his various contexts well, remaining engaging and absorbing throughout. This engaging quality is also, of course, down to the writing, which is structured superbly. Characterisation and character development are immaculate, and plot is both structured and conceived excellently. This is a most careful and rich text, rather unpredictable where it ought to be so and teeming with challenges and emotional pitfalls for its main character. A gripping text. Metatheatricality is also maintained throughout, which is most impressive and desirable, not only allowing for a greater emotional/psychological impact at the end of the performance and for a removed, more critical observation of Stuart’s victimisation/abuse but also for stylistic continuity and continuous relevance for the comedic elements listed above and others. Finally, still in regard to the text, the idea that Stuart’s mother has written this performance for him, somehow benefitting from this and notably reinventing her own image, and that she is forcing Stuart to perform her script is a subplot that is left to remain rather strange and enigmatic. Why Stuart’s mother, who, despite her abusive tendencies towards gaslighting and condescension, seems to be rather affected by what happens to Stuart and his childhood sweetheart, would have something to gain from this production is not sufficiently detailed or, most importantly, made clear to us. A few asides that he no longer wants to perform for her is not enough, I am afraid, to ground her in the overall narrative. In short, the mother we are presented in the play ‘she has written’ does not reflect the ‘true’ mother of which we are constantly made aware. And this needs to be addressed. The character of the mother, her intentions, and items that expose her will for fame and renown off of Stuart’s labour [which are currently nonexistent] need to be evident so that the entire concept retains a degree of logic and sense. A needy, entitled, manipulative and controlling mother does not equate a mother who will instrumentalise her son for her own success. This is a character discontinuity. Overall, this is a challenging and thought-provoking performance that confronts both the audience's morality and their hedonistic pursuits. Ainsworth proves himself here as a versatile and intelligent writer with a skill for exploiting and deconstructing the dark and the harrowing. “A challenging and profound performance but one suffering from stylistic discontinuities.”