Tracey Emin - I followed you to the end @ White Cube Gallery

Emin’s latest exhibition of new work fills White Cube in Bermondsey with the angst and anguish of a scorned lover; a person who has been wronged through love, who leaves, or is left.

The main corridor is lined with miniature paintings, aggressive and sensual in their composition. The larger spaces house the bigger pieces, which tower over the viewer. Continuing to explore themes we have seen from Emin before - bedrooms, sensuality, sex - and toying with absence, there is an almost snarky edgy quality to some of them, despite the anguish they depict. They feel like a breakup song, replete with searing guitar riffs and mashed keyboards. Most stunning were the scenes where the lover is so faint, painted over in white, that it appears to be only the imprint their body left in the bed, not the lover themself. The memory of their warmth.

There is anger here, which at times bubbles, but then fades. A memory of the anger - as much with oneself for being tricked as with the former lover for the transgression.

L'Addition @ Battersea Arts Centre

L’Addition begins with a foreword; the two actors coming out, lights up, to give us some information. The bit is reminiscent of the preambles ahead of performances, efforts to provide warnings to audiences. While it pokes fun at these things, at the same time it values and respects them, the tension between honouring the audience, challenging them, and respecting them at the forefront. 

We’re asked to forget the preamble, but of course are unable as the “performance” begins. Cyclical and slapstick in nature, it repeats and repeats, weaving around, never quite repeating in the same way and yet clearly the same. On the eve of the US election, it felt haunting to watch people repeating and repeating and never learning from their mistakes. 

What are we doing when we warn our audiences into oblivion? And what are we doing when we see a pattern, even say we want to break it, but are wholly unable? Absurdism feels so relevant in these times. I hear there is Rhinoceros outside…

Bert and Nasi are exceptional performers in their ability to fill the space, hold the tension, without a word. They play off one another beautifully, feeling improvised when of course we know it is wildly well rehearsed. The physical and textual choreography tripping beautifully over one another as if it is by mistake. 

Immersive 1984 @ Hackney Town Hall

Presented in the epic and imposing surroundings of Hackney Town Hall, 1984 attempts to translate the sprawling and intense novel into a production of about an hour. Upon arrival you are provided a number badge and some instructions, then invited into the main hall space where there is a bar, and 2 performers singing country-folk inspired music. From here the production begins, first in the main area, then through additional areas of the space where some information is revealed. There are inklings of participation for the audience when there is some interaction with the performers, and being asked to stand or sit, or move spaces.

However the majority of the production is observed; it is not discovered, the audience are moved around in an orderly fashion. Moments of the story unfold, but often without context or stakes, meaning that it is hard to follow, even for those who know the book well.

The design makes exceptional use of the space, and merges video and live performance to positive effect; the design alone is not enough to create a properly immersive and engaging experience for me, however.

Why A Black Woman Will Never Be Prime Minister @ Camden People's Theatre

Why A Black Woman Will Never Be Prime Minister takes us through 9 months (or 3 trimesters) of a young woman’s quest to break the cycles she comes from. She is child of a single mother who works incessantly to make a better life for her daughter; her daughter who has taken that gift and translated it into acceptance to university and an internship with a candidate for prime minister, alongside a steady relationship. The text intersperses spoken word poetry with direct address monologue and two-handed scenes (with her boss at the internship). The production moves fluidly through these elements, propelling the story forward as we learn that external barriers aren’t the only forces at work against this young woman; indeed she learns she became pregnant just before uni began, so that the trimester cycle of uni and the political campaign dovetail with her own pregnancy.

The two performers do a capable job bringing the characters and world to life, and the director sets a fun stylistic tone upfront; however as the seriousness of the challenges she is facing shift, the tone of the production doesn’t quite shift to the same degree, causing those more serious and touching moments to not work as well as they could. The script was strong in parts but did have some rather expository elements which could be done without. 

Toto Kerblammo! @ Unicorn Theatre

Toto Kerblammo tells the story of a young girl and her dog, as they navigate a challenging personal situation for her. Faced with a major tragedy and her mother taken to mental hospital, Effy has to move in with her aunt and uncle, where she can’t keep her dog Toto. It centres around the idea of listening — specifically that her dog can hear things she can’t to tell how she is felling. 

The story is told through headphones, creating an intimate atmosphere and one where the mechanism of listening becomes heightened. Moving back and forth through time and in and out of reality, the story unravels for us slowly, and in a really touching way, until we realise that another tragedy has occurred for Effy to move forward from. 

All elements of the production come together to perfection, but in particular, a couple elements stand out.  Tim Crouch’s script deals with intense subject matter, and for a young audience, yet doesn’t shy away from it or simplify it. In fact, there are elements introduced throughout the story which make it beautifully complex and difficult. The way the story unravels is careful to release just the right amout of story as it goes, slowly revealing what is happening and the depths of the situation to the audience. By positioning the story of this young girl’s emotional growth around her dog and what the dog can hear, with the overwhelming theme of listening, the audience are able to achieve a psychical distance and objectivity to the story while still being emotionally impacted by it. This is a beautiful story, well told — for audiences of all ages. 

And secondly, the sound design by Helen Skiera is truly exceptional, if relentless. The audio is playful and evocative — it creates closeness, and distance, builds spaces and changes times despite next to no change in the physical space. The layers to the sound design really emphasise the elements of the story and elevate them. The elements of sound design work together to create an intimacy between the audience, actors, and story.

Go see this.

Tituss Burgess - Indecisive Warrior @ Phoenix Arts Club

I love an intimate venue, and there was no better place for the incredible Tituss Burgess to bring his cabaret style show. Supported by an excellent 3 piece band and guest performers, Burgess demonstrated why his vocal talent is sought after, and importantly why he is regularly cast in what many would consider against type roles.

Spanning rock, pop, jazz, musical theatre, and beyond, Tituss is captivating. A magnetic performer, it is hard to take your eyes off him. The structure of the evening provided opportunity for Tituss to engage with the audience both in performance, and without that artifice. While the singing was incredible, what really stuck with me was the informal Q&A that started the second act. Tituss’ vulnerability and honesty in answering questions from the audience was incredible, and really lasting.

I can’t wait to see what he does next - hopefully on the West End if he achieves his goal of moving here.

CONGREGATION - Es Devlin @ St Mary Le Strand

50 individuals. 50 stories of coming to London under duress, forced to leave their homes. 50 portraits.

Es Devlin’s latest installation THE CONGREGATION at St Mary Le Strand showcases humanity in its purest form. Working with UNHCR and a team of co-writers, she met, drew, and interviewed 50 refugees living in London. Some who came decades ago, some only a few months — but regardless of when they came, each carries a story of creating a new home.

As you enter the church, the portraits are arranged like a choir, each drawn person holding an empty box. From here, a story unfolds, showcasing the uniqueness of each story while also drawing a thread of commonality, highlighting the humanity of these individuals, and their connection with the audience. Using mapped projections, music, and spoken word, we are transported. Despite the stories of strife, each individual shares a story of hope. The overall effect is surprisingly uplifting and hopeful.

NOWHERE - Fuel Theatre @ Battersea Arts Centre

Where are we safe? Khalid Abdalla’s solo show leaves nothing untouched in its challenge to the audience. Blending personal history with the politics that overshadow it, Khalid takes us through his family’s history as it relates to revolt, colonialism, and the current imperialist ventures in the West Bank and Palestine.

If it sounds heavy, it is - at times. But at times it is also darkly funny, light, playful, and despite the darkness, filled with hope.

Director Omar Elerian uses a brilliant blend of media to bring us this story - projections of old photographs, video which is and is not live (and it hard to tell when it transitions), and perhaps most movingly, images on a phone. To give the audience a story about contemporary uprisings which are made possible in many ways by the smartphone, which we far away primarily learn about through our phones, is nothing short of genius.

The play moves at a blistering pace and yet feels gentle, thoughtful. The performance, production, and script all come together in the most beautiful way, that the audience are left a little breathless, a little teary, and completely reminded of why we make theatre. This. This is why.

THE BELT - Ambiguous Dance Company @ The Coronet Theatre

The Belt, from Korea’s Ambiguous Dance Company, is a two-part event.

First, Past, is a site specific exploration of identity through repetitive movement, with 6 short performances which take place across different areas of The Coronet theatre. Billed as “immersive” i would argue the label does the work a disservice. Instead it is site-specific, with the movements inspired by the spaces, and vice versa. Throughout this section the audience are moved around the space by guides - this is a bit unceremonious, and moved at an intense pace (so much so that my group lost people more than once). Nonetheless the pieces were thought provoking in their own right.

Second, Future, takes the ideas of durational performance and boredom from contemporary theatre and places them into the context of dance. Situated in the main performance space at the Coronet, and lasting over an hour, the company perform a non-stop piece of choreography to a continuous techno DJ set. This on its own is exciting, however coupled with a movement vocabulary which challenges perfection, it is quite thrilling overall picture. The movement takes classical dance movement and muddies it, making it look like street or club dancing….while still underscored by strong technique and precision (despite looking to the untrained eye completely imprecise). The sheer endurance of the piece is breathtaking.

A delightful evening, which challenged multiple preconceptions.

Twine @ The Yard Theatre

Selina Thompson’s newest play, Twine, explores adoption, and the search of an adopted child to understand their history. Set in a magical between place, Sycamore has been split into three parts to represent her at different points in her life. Seed is her at 5 days old (when she was adopted), Sapling is her as a teen, and Bark is adult her, hardened to the realities of life.

The premise is intriguing, and there are moments where it is truly exciting, however as a whole piece there are moments that just don’t work. The first act worked better than the second, using music to engage and weave the story, although it ran a bit long and flagged toward the end of the act. The second act felt a bit disjointed from the first until the very final moments.

The music and performances were all strong, supporting a strong idea, but the script just didn’t quite have the pop it could have.

Mnemonic - Complicité @ National Theatre London

Remounted 25 years later, Complicité’s Mnemonic continues to resonate. While the dramatic conventions of the piece have been replicated and copied by countless artists and in numerous productions since, they still feel fresh here; indeed, it was notable that in some ways, theatrical innovation has (in the main) stalled since, continually replicating flexible spaces, overlapping scenes, projection and live video interaction.

It was fascinating to see McBurney (and the company’s) trademark movements and choices in this early work, although this could be rework.

Having not seen the original, only read about it, it is difficult to say just how much has been adapted and refreshed versus the original. Obviously references are altered, particularly at the opening of the play, referring to the performers in this production, and even to the caché of the original and the company.

All of that said, the opening moments — blindfolded, opening the audience’s emotional relationship to memory are so simple and powerful that they will never stop working theatrically.

ECHO (Every Cold-Hearted Oxygen) @ Royal Court for LIFT Festival

Where does performance happen? What does it mean to be present in a space? Nassim Soleimanpour’s latest play, ECHO, digs at these questions. Using the convention of an actor who hasn’t read the script before performing live which Soleimanpour used with great success on White Rabbit, Yellow Rabbit, this play pushes that technique further. Not only is the actor contending with a script they haven’t seen, but with technology, projection, and more. This play asks big questions; about who we are, what ties us to a place or a memory, and importantly about what it means to move away from home and family, living as an immigrant in another culture divorced from your own but unable to separate yourself.

I won’t say more as to not steal the surprise — but suffice it to say that the images and questions this play ask have been looming over me since seeing it. That’s not easy.

The Amazing Banana Brothers @ Soho Theatre

An hour of absolute mania; this two hander (of sorts) is performed at a frantic pace from the moment it begins, so that even the quieter moments contain the air of mania. This is a story of two brothers with dreams, and whose inability to meet those dreams fills them with darkness. That sounds a lot more high brow than it was and yet despite being silly, slapstick, shouty (not in a bad way) and frenetic — it was introspective and questioned our own ambitions and the efforts we make to stick to them.

I can’t say too much without giving it away, but suffice it to say this isn’t light watching. Darkly funny, completely silly, and compelling — well worth taking the time to see this if it comes through.

Slave Play by Jeremy O Harris @ Noel Coward Theatre

I was more than a little excited when the London production of Jeremy O Harris’ Slave Play was announced, after hearing about the New York production and its reception. This is a play intended to make people think, and it is not easy viewing at times.

Don’t worry - I won’t give much away. Only to say that it is a searing commentary on racism in today’s society, in the context of all that came before (thanks Kamala). The play itself is structurally the love child of Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls and Jean Genet’s Le Balcon (in all the right ways). It is delightfully confusing at first, then as it explains itself it challenges the viewer to examine their confusion and feelings on the earlier pieces. It is searing and raw.

This production’s cast are exquisite - every performance as exceptional as the next, a true ensemble. This is essential viewing - please, please go. Maybe you’ll be like half my row who walked out? Honestly, goals.

Medea Gosperia @ The Cockpit

Medea Gosperia is an operetta adaptation of the Greek story of Medea (you know, her…) which uses musical styles to explore what is happening to each character, their feelings and emotions. So Medea expresses through classical opera, while Jason expresses through Jazz, etc. The singers are all of exceptional quality and skill, supported by a brilliant 7 piece live band. The music at times works well to this premise, however at times the shifts in style felt arbitrary, rather than as if they were pushing the story forward. Similarly at times the clash of genre worked to brilliant dramaturgical effect, but not consistently.

Unfortunately for me, the libretto was weak, and undermined some of the interesting musical choices happening. The lack of energy in the lyrics translated to the cast feeling like things were moving too slowly at times.

Overall an interesting experiment, worth watching — but for me one that still needs a bit of development to recognise its true potential.

The Detour of Identity - Roni Horn @ The Louisiana Museum of Art

Words and images are my currency. Words accompanying images, snippets of ideas evoking response. So it is unsurprising that I’m drawn to artists like Roni Horn, for whom words make up such a significant part of the visual representation. Further, the interrogation of image and gender, how we present ourselves to be perceived, how we do perceiving.

The collection of Roni Horn’s work in The Louisiana exhibition is striking, benefitting from the winding hallways and rooms of the space itself. As the exhibition unfolds, images and motifs repeat, return, morph. . and this reflects our own experience of identity. We think we have changed, but then learn we have not.

In particular I enjoyed the photographs of water accompanied by text and observation in the “Still Water” series; mundane words, yet wildly compelling in their meaninglessness and inquiry into how our minds work, what we remember.

There is a dark whimsy to Horn’s work which really resonated for me. Brilliant stuff.

As You Like It (The Land Acknowledgement) by Cliff Cardinal @ Lift Festival

How do you hold an audience accountable? Cliff Cardinal’s As You Like It premiered in Toronto the day we moved to London, so I didn’t get to see it. . . but it was hard to avoid the furor it caused amongst Canadian theatregoers and critics. Some adored it; others were appalled. And in a way, that was the point. Reminding comfortable middle class audiences in Canada of the things they do and say to make themselves feel better, without actually doing anything.

So when I saw that this show was coming to London for the LIFT festival, I was excited of course, but also intrigued. In Canada, audiences are familiar with land acknowledgements as a construct, and have at least SOME knowledge of the horrific acts against indigenous people. But how would this translate to English audiences? I’ve now lived here nearly 3 years (this time around) and am reminded regularly how little Brit’s think about Canada, much less the politics of indigeneity, or indeed what the concept is at all. Furthermore, not only do they not think about Canada, but they are wildly underinformed (in the main) about their country’s role in “creating” the country, stealing the land, and the ensuing 200+ years of history.

Cardinal is an engaging performer, disarming the audience and making them feel comfortable, creating truly funny moments early on. He made some really clever adaptations to the script, providing some context to the UK audience that were necessary for the script to work, and for the accountability to have a hope of happening. He did a brilliant job in bringing this audience in — educating them while also adapting to their knowledge level, making it all the easier to turn the knife when the moment came. And you could feel this in the audience when the moment came (and came again. . . and again).

My only question is whether it could have gone further. . . did that audience really leave with a sense of what happened, continues to happen, and is in parallel with the much more publicised genocides? Or are they still sold the Canadian propaganda of nice people in a clean country with lots of trees? It is hard to tell.

Viola's Room - Punchdrunk

For me, there is nothing more exciting than an immersive performance that is simultaneously intimate. Many of Punchdrunk’s previous shows have functioned on a monstrous scale, however their latest offering, Viola’s Room, takes groups of no more than 6 through an audio guided journey, which magically unfolds before your eyes. The scale of the production is no smaller (in fact, i couldn’t help but wonder at the technical prowess necessary to create this event) however it feels tiny, miniscule, like you are just happening upon it.

Each audience member is given a headset, and invited to journey the exploration barefoot, creating a sensorial exploration full of touch and smell. You’re instructed to follow the lights, which is thrilling, but at times also nerve wracking as you think you see lights, or second guess the ones you do. The combination of narration, light, and space creates the most exciting suspense throughout.

My only quibble was pacing; I think it could have benefitted from even more slow moments, even the slow ones felt quick as you take in the immense detail of the space and story.

Definitely recommend seeing this!

Piece of Me @ Camden People's Theatre

At first, a seemingly silly exploration into childhood passions. And then, a deep dive into what it means to live in our hyper-recorded, overly monitored reality. Piece of Me frames around a young girl and her friends’ pop-star aspirations in the 90’s, but asks signficantly deeper questions about what we are giving up when we live our public lives.

Accompanied by an exceptionally interesting sound design, and some head bopping pop tunes, the play takes on some huge questions. I’m not convinced it answered all it set out to, but have to applaud the delightfully meta-theatrical exploration and play with form.

Get Off @ Battersea Arts Centre

This show isn’t intended to be easy viewing; from the very start, we see the performer, Katy, in a loop of video, nude in her bedroom, panning around the space. When the performance begins, she is laying on the floor of the white stage, in front of the screen, with a microphone. A clever play between the recorded Katy and the live in front of us Katy sets a tone for a funny performance that won’t take itself too seriously.

It continues with some truly delightful and funny moments, and some really challenging moments, and quite a lot of failure in performance. It was interspersed, however, with some fairly graphic moments projected up on the big screen, which I struggled to connect with the rest of what was happening in the story. Furthermore, it was never made clear why the performer was naked, or what purpose this served. Which is fine, but for me in the particular circumstance of performance (particularly female solo performance) this double objectification needs to have a purpose.

All in all, while there were some fantastic moments, and some that really made me think, the production as a whole (in this new version) felt undercooked — a lot of great ideas, but just missing that link that would pull them all together, giant poop video and all.