Us / Them

When I started writing this, I started by reading through the wikipedia article about the Beslan school siege. I knew nothing about it, really. But I was 12 when it happened. When I was 10, the twin towers came down and from that point I suppose I had some awareness that the world was big, and sometimes big things happen. But Beslan, 3 years later, drifted by me.

Children’s theatre in the UK, on the whole, is pretty gentle. It’s mostly made with schools in mind, as they provide such large chunks of ticket income, and so it’s reinterpretations of old stories or adaptations of classic books like 90% of the time. Generally, theatre for children is used to reinforce nice messages, like friendship or the importance of being yourself and other lessons from Saved by the Bell. It seems unlikely that Us / Them, which recaps the events of the Beslan school siege from the perspective of two children, would be made in the UK for an audience of nine and up.

There were no children or young people in the audience when I saw Us / Them at Summerhall, so it’s impossible for me to figure out how the piece might actually work for that age range, but I kinda see it. Instead of going over the full context, the children present their blinkered view of the world: where to see ducks, the size of supermarkets, a received impression that all Chechen men are paedophiles. It sets up the piece as playful, actually quite funny in places, and rooted in feeling more than historical accuracy. As a piece for children, it explores the events as possibility – the sort of thing that could happen, does happen – rather than as an abstract occurrence somewhere far off in a different place.

It is amazing. Constructed like a game in the playground, the two characters compete in their storytelling, sometimes racing ahead of each other or making their own version of what happened particularly spectacular. They chalk our their school, spin bomb wires from balloon tails and turn the effects of dehydration into dance. It looks BEAUTIFUL throughout, creating just the right amount of tangled mess. In being created to seem like it has come from the mind of children, it is haunting and affecting, capturing the horror and confusion of the situation without becoming tragedy porn.

There’s some issues, maybe, with presenting this work for financial gain given the subject at hand – and that’s worth flagging and reading a bit about in Andrew Haydon’s review – but there’s also a glimpse into what children’s theatre has the potential for. It is a way of helping young people make sense of the world. There’s a lightness to Us / Them that means it is a gentle nudge into the big wide world, asking difficult questions about otherness and conflict, without trying to fill in the gaps and over-explain a political situation. Children’s theatre can often exist in an idealised world – one of bright colours and happy endings – and there’s a joy in so much of that work, but maybe it could sit alongside some things that encourage children to interrogate and explore the darker side of the world they inhabit. Maybe my 12 year-old-self could’ve gone some way to understanding this, to even knowing it, if the UK could venture towards treating children like they deserve to understand the world.

This is difficult because so much is income driven, and so much is dictated about what is right for children to see by schools and parents – who have far more right to dictate that than I do – so I am aware I’m being a bit ideological here, but, fuck, imagine if we were churning out this sort of challenging, complex and stunning work for young audiences more often.

Of course, as the room of adults watching it and the slew of great reviews suggest, this is a show that is amazing to watch as a grown up – not least because it looks amazing, but because knowing that we live in a world where killing children can be used as political tools, means that the funniness and warmth of the two central characters is shattering.

Summerhall

Jeramee, Hartleby and Oooglemore

Every now and then, I think it’s important to see a bit of children’s theatre.

Of the last 10 shows I’ve seen, 5 have included a death (a sixth included a murder attempt), 3 have involved rape (or similar unconsensual insertion), 2 have been about the apocalypse, and one of them was Cleansed.

There’s that saying that theatre holds up a mirror to the world and shows us what it’s all about; and if that’s the case then the only conclusion I can draw is that the world is a brutal place and it’s not worth getting up in the morning. Which is true, in some ways, and more and more often I feel weighed down by it.

Children’s theatre doesn’t say that we are fucked. It doesn’t beat you over the head with the horrors of the world, or remind you of the guilt you feel because you aren’t doing enough to correct those horrors. Children’s theatre holds up a mirror to the world, but it’s a mirror distorted with optimism. In children’s theatre, we can be better.

Jeramee, Hartleby and Oooglemore is an antidote that lifted me back up: a much-needed reminder that even in the bleakest of times, there are things to be grateful for.

Three friends go to the beach, and it is just that: 50 exuberant minutes of beach frolics. Like human pokemon, Jeramee, Hartleby and Oooglemore can only use the character names to communicate. Coupled with physical comedy, they play out all of the drama and loveliness of the everyday, clowning their way through swimming, dancing, having a quick wee and arguing. These are characters that are fizzing full of life and who pack the room full of proper love, who are better together and need each other in different ways. With so few words at their disposal, the emotions are more potent and the jubilation feels almost tangible.

This is a show about asking for help, helping and having fun. In a world so cramjam full of awfulness, there needs to be room for silliness and simplicity. No one dies, there isn’t any rape, everyone’s limbs remain in tact. It’s just the beach. Jeramee, Hartleby and Oooglemore has, with just three words, reminded me about all that is good about being a human, and all that there is to hope for. After all, Oooglemore’s ball does come back.

Every now and then, it’s important to see a piece of children’s theatre – especially one as heart-stoppingly lovable as this – because every now and then it’s good to be reminded that if you can laugh a bit and if you are loved then maybe we can be ok.

Unicorn Theatre

Constellations

Matt Trueman wrote a thing not too long ago about heartbreak, and finding the emotions you want or need to feel when you are watching theatre.

Sometimes, though, you just so happen to stumble into a show that is actually about the things in your life right now, no searching needed to find your own feelings.

Constellations is about a couple. Marianne, a cosmologist, explains that the multiverse theory puts forward the idea that there are an infinite number parallel universes, each of which contains the outcome of a thing that did happen or the outcome of one of the millions and millions of things that did not. Constellations shows a microscopic fraction of the universes Marianne and her beekeeper boyfriend Roland inhabit, in which they get together or don’t, cheat on each other or don’t, break up or don’t, choose to die now or don’t.

Staccato style scenes begin, play out, then flicker back to the beginning of the scene to explore different possibilities and parallel universes. The tone switches from warm and joyful to melancholy with some speed, and although it is a pretty, delicate, occasionally very funny thing it is not more invigorating than watching an above-average rom-com separating itself from the rest by using science as a framing device. I’m calling Lone Scherfig as director for the film adaptation.

But despite it being good but not amazing, I feel a really deep affection for it.

3 weeks ago, my boyfriend and I broke up and it was pretty fucking shit. The last 3 weeks of my life have therefore been plagued with big ‘What If’ questions about what I should’ve done/said/cried less about to make it better.

In one week, my mum will go for a CT scan to investigate the sharp headaches she has been having recently. My brain is spiralling around all of the possible paths that this may lead her and my family down over the next little while.

So Constellations, with its rocky central love affair and brain tumour based ending, felt like it was for me right now. It felt like the average rom-com you watch when you feel sad and just need to eat ice cream because it makes you feel safe.

At times, Constellations is pretty fucking bleak. But everytime it turns to sadness, it is at least offering you the notion that somewhere, in a parallel universe, everything is just as you want it to be.

A Number

I was excited about A Number, at first. Playing with ticketing is awesome, so when you just get a number in lieu of a ticket I thought that was cool. It was cool for the first 5 minutes, too, because the set design is interesting and it’s (kind of) a good topic. But then it got less cool and got kind of boring.

There’s something sad, I think, about not finding the joy in a thing so many people though was a good thing. Being left out of the celebration.

Like, honestly, I thought it was dull. It’s set in this cube of mirrors (think Almeida’s Game but less modern flat, more Ikea shed) so there are an infinite number of the two characters. It feels like you are watching a futuristic style science experiment. Which means it feels sterile, and clinical, and like something you might answer some questions on in a GCSE exam. I didn’t feel any blistering, disturbing stuff that a lot of people got. I felt like there was a big pane of glass between me and feeling even remotely emotionally engaged.

Casting an actual father and son seemed odd, too, when watching. The performances sit strangely depending on which bit you are at. There’s not enough distance to feel between the father and the Original Son to generate any real sense of hatred, but they don’t look similar, sound that similar or move similarly enough for it to really matter during the bits between the father and The Second Actual Son. It just seemed like it was a good thing to write on a press release to get some features done, rather than a quality casting decision that would really influence the production.

Maybe I’m just emotionally unavailable. Everyone else was so tied to these clones and this man and everything between them, and I was thinking about getting food afterwards. I don’t feel like I didn’t get it or something, I feel bad for not feeling anything, and for not finding the amazing in the amazing. Because it isn’t like it’s really shit or anything. It’s fine.

Then there’s this other thing… where I just didn’t see the point. Like casting a father and son for a press release, putting on A Number feels like putting on a classic to sell some tickets (it worked). That’s fine, too, because you need to make the dollar and keep your audiences interested, but I just think if you do then find a way of making it really matter. There’s nothing that makes this feel relevant to Real Life now. The bit I felt most excited by was in the final scene when, towards the end, the final clone talks about his children and pulls out a phone to show the old man photos. It felt like A Thing That Might Happen, amidst a play of otherwise unlikely, distant situations. A PHONE. That was what got me even slightly excited, because at least they’d tried to make it up to date.

Are people actually fussed about cloning? Do people genuinely worry someone might scrape off a few bits of dry skin and then use it to generate an army of clones? It doesn’t feel scary to me, but I was 5 when Dolly the Sheep was first created so it feels like just a part of the science of my time, and I can see the use of the research. Plus, I don’t feel as a society we are anti things all being the same. The Young Vic, like every other theatre in London, sits opposite a Pret A Manger. On the way into work if I stop at Clapham High Street Station I can see three separate branches of Sainsburys. Maybe seeing a small army of people who looked just like you would be as comforting as knowing that you can buy own-brand orange juice every 30 metres.

The Young Vic

We Want You To Watch

National Theatre, Temporary Theatre

You could have a civilised, sensible discussion that considers multiple options and outcomes when trying to confront with a complex issue affecting today’s society. It could be very balanced, consider all sides of the argument, and attempt to reach a conclusion that satisfies the interests of the wide range of people the issue impacts.

Or, you could scream, buy a strobe, put up a shedload of scaff, come up with some balls-to-the-wall all-or-nothing solution and get an old man to dance around with a banana.

RashDash and Alice Birch have teamed up to do the latter at the National Theatre.

Honestly, We Want You To Watch is flawed and there are bits of it I don’t like. I’m not especially interested in the Queen as a comedy figure or as someone who holds any shock value and some sections feel like they go on too long. But that doesn’t matter.

It’s about pornography. Specifically, it about the pursuit of ending all pornography so we can ‘begin again’. Various scenes are presented that include the RashDash duo either working towards this goal, or presenting some gut wrenching reason as to why beginning again is the best idea they have.

It has been viewed as unbalanced, un-nuanced and simplistic. When I first came out of it I thought the same thing for a while. Then I changed my mind, because this is 75 minutes of theatre, not a debate team championship final, and I Want To Watch people dance, dick around with bananas and shoot people to save them. Balanced debate it a lot less fun and probably a lot less visually impressive than this show.

And then I really thought about it and balanced debate on this topic can fuck off.

For me, the whole argument was encapsulated within the first scene, within probably the first ten minutes. In one of several asides, Abbi and Helen sit under spotlight and explain that a violent act in porn is actually a violent act. It’s not like video game violence where someone made explosions with some software or film violence where the body double was wearing nice thick kneepads. If someone gets slapped about in porn, that is a person actually getting slapped about and you might actually be getting off to that. Maybe that person said ‘Yes, I will make this porn’, but that doesn’t take away the sting of the smack.

This is supported by a section of movement – the brilliant kind RashDash are known for, and the kind it is brilliant to see them merge with the words and thoughts of other artists even when it doesn’t work – that depicts how violent porn *feels*.

It feels like a hollow, choreographed beating.

So why do we need balanced debate? Why can’t they make a show that says ‘Actually, perhaps the act of having a wank to a lady being tortured is pretty fucking gruesome’? Because it is.  Why can’t they say ‘Perhaps if you’re still a child and someone shows you footage of a gagged woman being tied up, fucked and called a whore that could be damaging?’  Even if you grow up into a nice man who does fun runs and helps his wife with the washing up or whatever. Why do we need to be balanced against something that is so plainly, infuriatingly shitty?

The solutions put forward here are over simplistic. Turn off the internet. Create a decree outlawing porn. Begin again. Simplistic, but aggressive and bold in a way that matches the anger the topic inspires. Simplistic but visually AWESOME and a lot more exciting than wondering aloud how we might police pornography in the future.

This isn’t about actually making any of this stuff happen. We Want You To Watch is a beautifully hollow 75 minutes of watching a cast continually humiliate themselves in a series of increasingly degrading acts*, because that’s what porn is. It feels angry and sad and bleak. It’s the trigger for debate, not the solution to anything. I don’t think it’s trying to be. It doesn’t need to be.

*This is also the title of the sequel to Show 5.

[I initially wondered about writing something discussing whether the ‘balance’ thing was put in other reviews of other people’s work. I didn’t remember anyone writing about Men in the Cities saying ‘Chris Goode presents many reasons why Capitalism might be bad, but he does nothing to offer a solution  or workable alternative’. I thought about looking into whether the balance thing was applied because this show was made by primarily by women, or because people are happy to talk about capitalism and no one wanted to talk about porn, or maybe turning off the internet upset people because they weren’t sure where to put their reviews. I don’t have time to fully research any of this, but thought it worth mentioning as this all crossed my mind.]

Gods Are Fallen and All Safety Gone

Firstly, I’d just like to draw attention this this exchange:

Greyscale offered me a free ticket to their show. This is amazing. I couldn’t accept the free ticket because I was busy, but instead I paid for a ticket and went on Saturday. Because there’s something really exciting about a company who are so keen to share this thing they’ve made that they are happy to give tickets to randomers on social media. Kindness is the best form of marketing.

Anyway.

Gods Are Fallen and All Safety Gone is four scenes between a mother and daughter, each covering a similar topic, each held in a similar way, all separated by an unspecified but very heavy something.

It’s a lovely steady solemn show. Beautiful, really. Beautifully acted, with two performers circling one another in an endless dance and creating characters with depth and warmth using what is actually a very small number of words in not a very long show. Beautifully written, too, full of the kind of over-lapping dialogue that cosies up to you in familiarity.

BUT.

There’s this thing that bothered me.

I worry it bothered me because someone pointed this thing out to me before I saw the show and so it was all I could think about.

BUT.

It still bothered me.

Why were these two women being played by men?

This is no way a slight on the two performers who were great. Wonderful.

But there are definitely women who can perform as well as they did.

It’s portraying two women warmly and with deep complexity. And it’s written and directed by a woman. It’s just that these could be women on stage, and I think the show would remain as warm and complex.

In fact, there are women on stage. A real-life actual mother and daughter duo sit at the side of the stage and watch on. But, in the presence of these two men portraying women, I found the actual women’s silence a bit… distressing.

There’s been

SO

MUCH

WRITTEN

about how women are underrepresented in theatre. So, then, when there’s this brilliant script with a solid, driven and clearly lovely company behind it, it’s a bit upsetting to see these two fantastic roles that could so easily be women go to men.

Of course there’s a reason behind it.

In an exquisite write, Tim Bano suggests the gender reversal lends the story universality… but does that mean women cannot be empathised with in the same way? Over at HuffPost, Jessie Thompson puts forward that ‘This genderless casting has the effect of removing the baggage of womanhood’, but manhood too comes with all its own baggage. Andrew Haydon reads it as a ‘jobshare’ between the actual mother and daughter and the two performers – but even this leaves me unconvinced, as the actual mother and daughter could remain as captivated while the actors still spent less time making it apparent that they were acting like they were really mother and daughter.

I can comprehend and understand every one of these points, can see why they are probably actually right, can see that maybe I am being a bit too simplistic with this. But I still have this ache because I wanted to see women speaking on stage.

Honestly, I’m not trying to do a disservice to Gods Are Fallen and All Safety Gone because it is a gorgeous, tender thing (seriously, read Tim Bano’s review). And because it is such a gorgeous thing, like so many plays before it, it just feels like women got a bit robbed while they sat silently at the side as the men got to lap up the really poetic dialogue and intense feelings.

Camden People’s Theatre

Carmen Disruption

Almeida Theatre

(probably contains spoilers)

It took me about 20 minutes to really sink into Carmen Disruption.

When I realised the bull was actually breathing, I sunk right in and just kept on falling.

Carmen Disruption is like if Bizet’s Carmen was hit by a massive bomb and scattered everywhere in little bits, and then someone found some of the pieces and tried to put it all back together again. But the person putting it back together had only heard bits of the opera, and they had just lost their new iPhone and they were really fucking angry about how much it turned out they actually missed and needed the iPhone because they couldn’t even look up the plot of Carmen The Actual Opera. And then once they’d finished trying to put it all back together, it spontaneously combusted into slow falling metallic confetti and fury.

I mean it’s actually much cleverer than that; there are loads of brilliant parallels between this and Carmen The Actual Opera, and layers of ideas and anger piled up. But the point is that it feels blown apart, ripped up and aggressive.

The Almeida has been made to look like a backstreet opera house, complete with tattered chandelier hanging from above and red carpet shredded along the aisles. The theatre bleeds into the set, with bricks crumbled and theatre seats ripped out and left abandoned on stage. The lighting design has that thing where they fill the whole place with haze then have really pale lights and it makes everything seem really, really dusty. It’s beautiful and unsettling.

There are 6 characters on stage, some of whom are based on characters of Bizet’s original, but worn down and updated by the modern world. They never engage directly with each other, and they sort of aimlessly inhabit a non-specific homogenised world. It’s hollow and haunting: where Bizet’s Carmen is full of unbridled-let’s-run-away-together passion, Stephens’ version is wallowing in horrible loneliness and self-loathing. Even in acts of intimacy there is distance, a screen or a phone or a shitload of money at stake – when describing intimacy Carmen Disruption is at its most skin-crawlingly violent. No one is connected, they just fuck or share awkward sexy selfies with manipulative old perverts.

A singer wanders through the stage belting out lines from Carmen The Actual Opera, an echo of the passion that their disconnected world can’t grasp hold of anymore. She is permanently out of reach, only noticeable when she might be worth of a fuck with a rich man or her death might look pretty cool on Instagram.

The thing about watching Carmen Disruption is that it actually hurts. It’s sort of this weird, mystical world but it’s so much also the world we live in, or at least the world we are hurtling towards. It hurts, sets your soul on fire and makes you wish you could finally delete your fucking Facebook account.

You watch a screen for the final seconds, deceived out of watching the actual play by pixelated text. A final act of disruption to really frustrate you at the end of a fractured, blistering hour and a bit.

Stand

Battersea Arts Centre

This is sort of about Chris Goode and Company and Oxford Playhouse’s Stand at Battersea Arts Centre, but it is also about actually taking a stand.

Stand is a verbatim piece about standing up, being counted and being part of something. It uses the words of 6 anonymous people – some long term activists, some one-off do-gooders, all quietly brilliant – to craft an idea of what it means and how it can feel to stand up for something that matters to you. An older man fights vivisection on Thursday afternoons; another is left jaded following the fight to maintain a protest space; two are climate change campaigners; one is a once-troubled teenager turned local councillor via counsellor for asylum seekers; and the last is a woman whose adopted daughter defended a homeless man on a bus, but where the real miracle is the adoption in the first place. There are successes, failures and outcomes somewhere in between, but there is one thing on which all are certain: no one is in it alone. These are not just their stories.

Stand is gentle, a delicate selection of journeys performed warmly and plainly. Watching it feels like someone is lightly taking your hand and saying ‘Go on.’

On Saturday, I went to the Take Back the Beach demonstration in Hyde Park. It had been popping up in my newsfeed for the week beforehand, and I had a sort of vague idea of maybe going if I felt up to it. The protest was in response to Protein World’s ‘Are you Beach Body Ready?’ adverts and was set up to celebrate all different body types, involving heading down to Hyde Park and having a small party in bikinis.

Seeing Stand didn’t make me go, but it did give me a nudge in that direction. So I went.

I would like to make a difference. Being part of something feels like the start. Or a step towards the start, at least.

Take Back the Beach is not my story. It’s the story of a load of girls who feel affronted by the way women continue to be portrayed in the media, and who decided to half-strip in a public green space and have a lovely day. I don’t even own a swimsuit, but I took my tights off which is a BIG DEAL for me, as a girl who makes every effort to never show flesh that isn’t face or hands. Having my pale legs on display felt like it really, really mattered for me. Maybe that sounds ridiculous, but that’s how it feels. That’s a big part of my stand.

There were men and women there in various states of undress, inflatable beach toys and a massive group of brilliant, passionate people. Of particular note were a group of 13 year old girls from their school’s feminist club, who were so aware of the challenges that were going to face them and their bodies in the next few years that just being in the same space as them felt like giving them the power they needed to keep being fucking amazing human beings.

Did it make a difference? Well, Protein World’s sales have had a massive increase in recent weeks. But, the ad cannot appear again in its current form. There’s a group of 13 year old feminists who can go out and face the world with a little bit more support behind them. There’s a group of women and men who spent a day meeting a new people and celebrating the fact that they are all beautiful. It didn’t change the world, but we tried.

And that is what Stand seems to be about. Following what you believe and just having a fucking go. If nothing else, at least Take Back the Beach was part of a conversation about body image. And that’s what Stand, full of words and ideas and optimism, is about too.

“Being part of the conversation is important.”

It is a beautiful piece of programming to surround the election with. In a time when political parties are clamouring for votes, it can feel like your power is limited to a cross on a ballot paper, selecting the lesser of many evils. But you have power if you claim it. You can make a difference, and even little differences can mean something big. Stand is not telling you what is right or wrong, it is asking you if you can just try to right what you think the wrongs are. Be the change you want to see in the world, or at least part of the story.

Go on.

The Twits

Royal Court Theatre

I love kids’ theatre. I work in one, I’ve worked in another, I lap that shit and all the puppetry, disco ball, saccharin goodness that comes with it up.

So The Twits at the Royal Court kind of feels like a misfire to me. It’s a two hour show on at 7:30pm aimed at ages 8+. If you’re 8, this means a late bedtime. If you’re The Royal Court, it means not many children in your auditorium at show time, it seems. It feels like a show made for children, but that’s being seen by adults.

I don’t read reviews before I see something. I worry that they will colour my opinion, or that I will read someone’s very clever thoughts about a thing and instead of engaging with a show, sit in the dark eagerly waiting the interval when I can pretend someone else’s very clever thought popped into my head as I watched. Which is a dick move. But having now seen The Twits and then read reviews, I see it’s not been especially well received.

There’s a bit towards the end of Finding Neverland where they put on the first ever performance of Peter Pan and Johnny Depp really pisses off Dustin Hoffman by inviting loads of tiny orphans into his super posh theatre and scattering them around the auditorium. They laugh along with the performance, and their happiness and delight spreads to the adults surrounding them. The Royal Court need to recruit some orphans.

A couple of reviews have mentioned the lack of children in the audience – and there weren’t many when I saw it*. I got lucky and was set next to two children, with another a few rows in front. They all seemed to really enjoy it. Bizarrely, the Telegraph’s two star review mentions a seven year old claiming it to be a better-than-two-star “best ever” (if deeply unfaithful to the book). Again, implying kids like it. I watched with my boyfriend and we both stood firm on the idea that his nephew would’ve found it hilarious.

I bloody loved The Twits. I thought it was funny and weird and stunningly designed. But I was sat near children – so the joy is not really in watching Mrs Twit batter her husband over the head with a frying pan, but in watching three children have a right good giggle. They were engaged and excited.

It’s not got the polish that a lot of Tiffany shows have, and Hoggett’s movement is less slick and more slapdash than his usual fare. It’s kind of brilliant, because it sort of embodies this horribleness from the main characters. It’s actually uncomfortable to watch something a bit shit, and to me it feels deliberate that you are being made to feel uncomfortable. I want it to be uncomfortable if I’m made to watch a troupe of massively mistreated monkey performers molly dance. Plus, it’s all supposed to mimic a fairground style circus – and fairground style circus is always a bit shit.

If I did read the book when I was little I don’t remember it. I didn’t know until afterwards that it’s a massive fabrication of plot, made up by Enda Walsh that uses the central characters of Dahl’s novel as a basis for a bigger story. I think this is kinda cool. I mean, I think it’s a bit deceptive that a lot of the marketing copy surrounding the show doesn’t make it clear that this isn’t a fairly faithful adaptation – maybe that’s why it’s ‘mischievous’ though, or maybe because it’s hard to sell tickets to schools if your show isn’t as obviously rooted in the novel as a teacher may hope. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the backlash about the adaptation is because it’s not quite what people expect from the marketing surrounding it. But, anyway, I like the idea of taking one idea and building it into a bigger different thing.

The Twits on stage is a wildly political thing. It’s been pointed out that the politics is a bit simple and obvious. A fair point. Mr and Mrs Twit are very, very posh people who like to go hunting  and oppress people, not unlike the (stereotypical view of) Conservatives. The Welsh monkeys and the Northern workers at the fairground revolt, and the Twits are shown what for. It is an absolute blatant middle-finger-up fuck you to the Tory party. It’s about as subtle as a red-hot frying pan to the face.

But I’m 23 and trapped in election mindset Britain. Theatre for young people isn’t necessarily known for its subtlety, is it? Again, this is where you need children in the audience because you need energy and excitement; otherwise it’s a room of left-wingers being told the Tories are all dicks in an annoyingly patronising manner. If you’re 8, this is not a show about British politics. This is a show about the importance of standing up for yourself. This is a show about ripping out your own fur in the fight or your freedom. This is a show about questioning authority. This is a show about fighting back. Plus, it has nice things about family and friendship. If I had an 8 year old, that is a message I would be happy to have drummed into my kid without any even attempt at subtlety. Maybe I would’ve tempered the ‘fuck the posh-os’ vibe slightly.

Just after Mrs Twit’s Queen’s speech mockery, Mr Twit warily draws attention to the audience. He asks if anyone has anything else to say. The little girl in front of me’s hand shot up so quickly I thought she might start the revolution there and then. Her excitement rippled into the seats around her, though her dad quickly quietened her down. He probably didn’t want to get picked on. Or, everyone else was being such a well behaved middle-class theatre audience he was worried about breaking convention.

I imagine it was probably meant to be a nice message for the weans, and the anti-Tory thing was just for the adults, but then they got carried away. The moral of the story (besides fuck the posh-os), is get children to attend your theatre for children where possible.

*Maybe it’s because I was at a £10 Monday performance and adults care more about saving money than children, which is why there weren’t many kids there on the night I watched it. In which case, a lot of this review might be unfair.

Orpheus

Battersea Arts Centre is my favourite place in London. And the reason is because of things like Orpheus – Battersea Arts Centre and Little Bulb Theatre’s retelling of the Greek Myth.

It lies somewhere between a silent movie and a cabaret in 1930s Paris. The show is funny, sweet and energetic. The set is pretty, the lighting is pretty and the costumes are pretty and work well when swapping between serious and comedic tones. The music is beautiful. At its core it’s a solid show. And then it’s also a lot more than that.

Orpheus is not artistically ground-breaking. It isn’t going to alter the way you view the world. I am not a changed woman having watched it. And sometimes shows at BAC do offer those things as a result of seeing a show. But I don’t really think Orpheus is trying to do that. Orpheus is a cracking night out.

It is performed with generosity and joy. As the cabaret comes alive the audience clap and cheer. The first half is fine and nice and good but it is at the interval where Orpheus becomes electric. In a moment of pure perfection during the extended interval an elderly couple stand and begin to dance together. Several other couples follow. The band keep playing and there’s this rush of affection that starts out being directed towards the couple waltzing and spinning their way through the seating and, as the second half begins, is redirected towards the company.

The story continues and the music keeps playing with a sudden underlying new energy from the audience. And then. And then. AND THEN. Eurydice is in the underworld, Orpheus wants her free and Hades denies his request. THEN PERSEPHONE SINGS. Persephone is played by Tom Penn. As he steps forward I thought this would be an over-the-top, sudden drag number. But it’s not. He sings the story of Persephone in the most spellbinding way. And it is here that Orpheus makes my heart briefly cease to beat before causing it to explode in ecstasy. It is high and haunting and so utterly, utterly beautiful I wanted nothing more than to cry my little eyes dry. In this moment, Orpheus manages to present one of the most mesmerising moments I have ever seen in theatre.

We reach the end. Orpheus and Eurydice are reunited in death. The band play their final songs. The audience leave the Grand Hall and enter the bar where the party continues with more live music. This is how Battersea Arts Centre carves out its place in my heart – they treat theatre as so much more than seeing a show and somehow create an experience around it that creates an atmosphere of shared excitement. The front of house staff walk around in black tie and everywhere is decorated to fit the 30s theme. They’ve made an extra little bar. You can get seats where you’re offered dinner and your little table candle will illuminate the play’s darker moments like twinkling stars in the sky.

Orpheus is about having a brilliant night – with dancing, drinking, laughter and joining in. I had a brilliant night.