Spies Like Us: Woyzeck

Spies Like Us' production of Woyzeck is a masterful and sublimely choreographed work of physical theatre, making every movement meaningful as it examines the mental decline of Franz Woyzeck, a soldier and an everyman. 

‘What’s wrong? You look so wild’.

The phrase ‘physical theatre’ has a tendency to conjure visions of awkward mimes and interpretative dance. But Spies Like Us’ production of Woyzeck is a sublimely synchronic and challenging work that makes George Buchner’s infamously unfinished play simultaneously contemporary and transcendent.

Every move, every prop, every expression is efficient and valuable. No raised eyebrow or side glance is wasted. I have seen performances by the Royal Ballet which were less in synch and smoothly choreographed.

Even while the audience’s focus is on the actors speaking at that moment, the others never stray from the scene: their faces move like plasticine, contorting and gurning into positions which transform them both into scenery and spectators.

Woyzeck follows the struggle of Franz Woyzeck as his grasp upon reality becomes ever more precarious. A soldier attempting to provide for his new-born son and girlfriend, his relationships with those around him - and the world - are challenged as he is a made a pawn in the games of his superiors.

The play examines the capacity of authority to dehumanise and devastate the life of not only the individual, but of any relationships that individual may have. Subjected to medical experiments by a somewhat sadistic doctor – which includes the consumption of copious amounts of peas – Woyzeck becomes an emblem of the disposability of the poor, achieved through the steady denial of autonomy. And a soldier – considered ‘the lowest form of animal life’ – is the ideal metaphor to illustrate this.

The cast of five are equally dressed in military khakis despite adopting differing characters (a mother, a doctor, a salesman), highlighting our mutual susceptibility to madness and depravation, despite the social positions we may adopt – audience included. The staging is sparse, with just five tin buckets and some plain white sheets, which are diversely used as instruments, stools or walls and despite a small faff with a curtain prop, the work is seamless.

It is a truly astounding work of theatre. The maturity and intelligence of the performances make it difficult to believe that the cast are only in their early twenties, but in fact the entire company of Spies Like Us are still students. Irregardless of their age, watching Woyzeck felt like being privy to the incendiary emergence of the nation’s next generation of great actors.

Although, considering the flawlessness of the production, perhaps they could teach some of the more established performers in Edinburgh a thing or two.

Originally written for Voice Mag

Brennan Reece: Evermore

‘Over the next 3000 seconds, you will experience human emotions, such as joy, laughter and boredom’. So begins Brennan Reece’s Evermore, and he’s right – except for the boredom part.

This is a story of boy meets girl. At the Edinburgh Fringe, actually. Except unlike Tom in 500 Days of Summer,  Brennan Reece is wholly captivating, sympathetic – and hilarious. Evermorefollows Reece’s slight obsession with romantic comedies, pivots around the romantic failures of his teenage years, and circles around his image of the ‘ideal’ woman – one who has pockets in her dress. Who he then meets.

Evermore is an entirely captivating hour of stand-up / spoken word / theatre. It’s a difficult show to define, as it seems to transgress the established boundaries of so many creative forms, but it is hilarious, and moving and one of the best things I’ve seen this year. At the end, my cheeks hurt from laughing so much, while also trying to hold back from crying.

Reece looks less like a stand-up comedian and more like a member of One Direction - wearing a yellow jacket and brown trousers, he quips that he looks like a lost Brownie. Speaking with the punctuated lilt of a spoken word artist, combined with live backing music and his Manchester accent, Reece’s lines often slip into rhyme as he talks about rom-coms and ‘fun moms’.

At no point did it feel like the audience were being talked at – Reece’s expert navigation of and interaction with the audience meant it felt as though we were all in it together, and were unanimously rooting him on by the end.

The phrase ‘the future of comedy’ is naff and typically overused, but if there is a future, I really hope that this is what its comedy looks like.

Originally written for Voice Mag

Elf Lyons: ChiffChaff

What do you get if you combine Mr. Bean, Liza Minelli and Bubbles from Ab Fab? No, I didn’t think I’d see those three in a sentence either, but then I never thought I’d see an hour of comedy which attempted to explain economic theory through song and dance.

Elf Lyons describes herself as ‘like everyone you’ve ever met on the night bus’. I’ve had some strange encounters on the night bus but never have I ever had a woman dressed as an ‘aggressively winsome’ Liza Minelli explain economic theory to me via song before. And yet, here we are.

I thought the title, ChiffChaff, might’ve been a piece of local idiolect that I was unaware of, but having Googled it, it turns out to be the name of a bird (the show has nothing to do with birds.) This idiosyncrasy seems appropriate for an act which attempts to dissect fiscal responsibility and microeconomics through cabaret, hula hooping, and some slightly questionable mime.

The daughter of an economist, Elf (real name Emily-Anne) has incorporated her childhood lessons in economic theory into an hour-long one-woman show that uses a variety of props and personas to entertain – and educate! Lyons opens the show by shouting the beginning of Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities. The delivery, apparently, is a technique taught to her by her aforementioned father.

Elf engages with the audience, delivering instruments into the hands of luckily eager members, and requesting two compete in a race to blow up a sex doll the fastest. Only one of them has a hole in it - this, she says, is a metaphor for capitalism. There are many an absurd extended metaphor, and it’s somewhat delightful just trying to follow the winding path of them.

Elf isn’t afraid of the truly ludicrous, of aggressively gyrating or adopting – and sliding between – ridiculous accents. In a single sentence she seemed to drift between German, Cockney, American, Chinese, and an odd ‘sexy baby’ which only reminded me of Catherine Ryan’s impression of Cheryl Cole.

Elf is an expert at using her eyebrows to charm, and potentially hypnotise, the audience. With lids bedecked in glitter, she stares and winks and flirts at the audience, manipulating her face into an apparently unlimited array of expressions. She riffs of the elfin, coquettish-economist persona she has created for the show.

Yet in Chiff Chaff, Lyons also confronts the reality of being a millennial attempting to carve out a career in the arts, while working zero-hour contracts and paying £800 a month rent to live in a South-London flat ‘made out of black mould’.

It is an excellent, wonderfully bizarre hour of comedy and economics which doesn’t lead to deflation, and a perfect example of the creative luminescence the Fringe allows to shine.

Originally written for Voice Mag


Anchor

Anchor describes itself as ‘dance, physical theatre and circus’. The last descriptor perhaps applies, but not in an altogether flattering way.

Anchor opens with a voice over of spoken word, a faux-profound pondering of the nature of love (‘love is some strange, intangible, abstract force’). Then The Platters’ ‘Only You (And You Alone)’ starts playing, as Mehdi Duman, wearing only boxers, drags Elsa Couvreur, in only her underwear, across the stage as she clings to a belt. The first five minutes continue in this fashion, with the couple swapping roles and positions as they are dragged across the stage in alternatively awkward poses, back and forth.

All I can think is of how uncomfortable it must be, of the floor burns that must be accruing by performing day after day. They roll around on the floor, ostensibly intimating the nature of their relationship, and then break apart. She flings a sock in his direction, he hands her a boot. They dress, again painfully slowly, and feign checking their reflections in the ‘mirror’ of the audience. It feels like they are trying to fill time – an hour, after all, is a long time for just two dancers to perform.

Although I’m not sure you can really call this dancing. It’s movement, but there are limited portions of sustained flow, and even fewer passages set to music. After the first 15 minutes, it becomes clear what they’re trying to do: depict the heady falling and fresh obsessiveness of a new relationship; of not wanting to tear your hands off each other; of never wanting to concede in the ‘I love you more’ war.

But that’s all it takes. The attempted point is protractedly made, and the rest of the time is spent wondering how long they’re going to labour it for. I kept hoping for more dance, for the pace to pick up, for a revelation. But it never came: instead, an audio plays of the couple’s apparent first conversation. It is a cringe-worthy exchange that feels unnecessary to include: it is like when a friend starts a new relationship and tells you too many details, except without the emotional investment in their happiness.

The duo disappear off stage for about a minute while the lights are dimmed and Elvis Presley’s ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’ plays over the speakers, only to return dressed in matching inflatable dinosaur costumes. There seems no point in this, and the rationality of leaving your audience with minutes to spare until the end of the performance eludes me. It is ridiculous, in a confusing rather than entertaining way.

The show was fragmented, unified only by the consistent feeling of discomfort I felt throughout while watching. If you have an hour of your life to waste, go see this. Or recommend it to your horrible ex.

Originally written for Voice Mag

Suzi Ruffell: Nocturnal

Suzi Ruffell's Nocturnal is a joyous hour of stand-up which manages to create an atmosphere of hopefulness while discussing the dismal state of the world. Confronting internet trolls, pervy monks and the mundanity of hen-dos, Ruffell delivers her material with empathy, expert timing and the ease that only comfy shoes can afford. 

Suzi Ruffell loves doing stand-up. She loves, loves, loves stand-up. She tells us this at the very start of the show, after individually greeting each audience member as they enter the room. This creates an atmosphere of friendly familiarity: we’re all here to spend an hour in each other’s company, to enjoy our mutual appreciation of comedy.

But it is evident that Ruffell – or, ‘the Ruff Stuff’ as she refers to herself (it’s a nickname she’s trying out) – adores comedy without her even telling us. She seems to exude delight in her occupation, bounding about the stage like a child telling a relative what magical gift they received for Christmas.

Her energy and smile are infectious, even when she’s talking about internet trolls and homophobia and how the world’s become a little bit too much like an episode of Black Mirror. She seems to project empathy, sharing her own fears and paranoias with the audience so we can share in them: to show the audience that we are not alone in feeling anxious in the current climate, because really, ‘if you don’t have anxiety, I don’t think you’re concentrating’.

Ruffell takes us on several very funny journeys with her: down the rabbit hole of her insomniac ‘3am press conferences’, along far-reaching Twitter spats, to the ever-so-slightly homophobic small towns of Australia. And refreshingly, Ruffell talks about her sexuality without ever descending into self-deprecation: a line notably highlighted by Hannah Gadsby.

Rather, Ruffell talks about the pain of growing up gay, feeling strange and alone, while hopefully imagining a future where Simba and Pumba are out and proud, Elsa’s got a girlfriend and Disney creates a princess who wears suits and comfortable shoes.

Nocturnal is a truly joyous hour, and while Ruffell may be unable to ever relinquish her anxiety while we still don’t know if Britney’s okay, she seems to be having a wonderful time talking about it. If you’re worried about the state of the world at the moment (let’s be honest, that’s all of us) Nocturnal is for you.

Originally written for Voice Mag

Ivo Graham: Motion Sickness

Ivo Graham is hurtling towards adulthood: he’s engaged, he’s got a mortgage - and he’s finally started buying his own socks. Motion Sickness is a smoothly crafted hour exploring one millenial’s growing pains, and the unexpected anxieties and delights that arise along the way.

Ivo Graham opens his show with an anecdote about riding in the cab - to use specific railway terminology - of a Chiltern Rail train. He mentions this not only as testament to his long love of railways (and being a connoisseur of the Thomas the Tank-Engine ‘literary’ series) but as a deliberate ploy to ingratiate his audience to him: ‘start with a brag, show ‘em who’s boss’.

Graham certainly is in full charge of his routine. Though the comic maintains some of his ex-public schoolboy awkwardness (he attended Eton, a place he describes as ‘repression inception’, where ‘anxiety’s on the curriculum’) Motion Sickness is a slick and well-structured show. This isn’t to say that Graham’s comedy is conspicuously methodical - this is not a show of contrived three-second laughs.

Motion Sickness moves with a natural flow which navigates between topics with a circuitous ease that is reminiscent of Eddie Izzard’s self-referential style; the ability to wind an eccentric anecdote back to an earlier, separate point while maintaining a cohesive narrative. Graham doesn’t reach quite as far on the journey, but his delivery is tight and avoids the potholes of ‘haven’t you noticed’ observational comedy.

Each anecdote is punctured with witty, divergent metaphors – recounting loosing his virginity as ‘reporting back from the Chelsea de-flowering show’ – which not only illustrate the sharpness of his humour, but make potentially dull subjects like purchasing socks or proposing (vomit was involved) funnier and more universally entertaining.

Although Graham quips about his privilege as an Eton-educated man, he constantly edges between endearing self-deprecation and studied arrogance, preventing either to predominate and become distracting. When discussing his recent mortgage, Graham ironically notes that he and his girlfriend are now ‘the only millennials who cannot afford to buy avocados because they spent too much money on property.’ He clearly understands his audience and his performed identity, and is able to play between the two with an astute ease.

The title of Motion Sickness might reasonably describe the vertiginous feeling of growing up, and the anxieties, decisions and responsibilities that accompany it. Illustrating the uneasy transition, Graham describes the possibility of entering parenthood while still a child (at heart) as ‘a Bugsy-Malone piece of immersive theatre’.

Motion Sickness was an hour of consistently, and genuinely funny, comedy – which included Ivo Graham’s secret to true happiness: three bags of Doritos (Cool, Cheese and Chilli) emptied into a single bowl, creating the ultimate ‘Do-three-tos’, and thus eliminating any decision anxiety.

Alleviate yourself of any decision anxiety, and just go see the show.

Originally written for Voice Mag


Finding Fassbender

Finding Fassbender follows Eve as she moves from Wolverhampton to the no-so-bright lights of London. Lonely, homesick and frustrated with her sloppy, synth-loving housemate, while tidying the hallway Eve finds a letter addressed to the prior tenant, leading her on a personal odyssey to reunite it with its rightful (and rather famous) owner.

Eve is 31. Her aunt’s just died, she’s working in telesales in ‘a shipping container in a carpark’ and she’s never been more than 20 miles outside of Wolverhampton on her own. But then her boss has offers her a promotion – in London, and she leaves her family, boyfriend, and pet cat Steve Bull (named for the Wolverhampton Wanderers player) behind as she embarks for life in the city.

It starts well. The swanky city office has beanbags and a Nespresso(!) machine, her colleagues are fun and someone even offers her cocaine (she turns it down, but only after insisting, ‘thank you so much for thinking of me!’).

But soon the smog of the city descends; her flat is a ‘shithole’, her boyfriend is too busy looking after the cat and it’s UTI to visit, and the lure of the Midlands becomes nearly too much to bear. But the discovery of a letter addressed to the former tenant, none other than German-born, Irish actor Michael Fassbender, triggers a compulsive desire to reunite it with its intended recipient (and an extensive Google search marathon).

Performed by Lydia Larson, Finding Fassbender is a one-woman show which explores a millennial's move from the Midlands via the occasionally absurd vehicle of a celebrity obsession. It is easy for one-person shows to drift into lacklustre monologues, with the actor talking at the audience as they struggling to maintain full attention. But Larson’s captivating adoption of multiple personas and skilful navigation of a range of accents, from German and Irish to the Yam Yam lilt of her parents, made it all-too-easy to forget that there was only one person on stage.

While a play centred around one woman's unhappy obsession could make for uncomfortable viewing, Finding Fassbender adeptly captures the idiosyncrasies which make – and endear us to - a person, whether they are attractive traits or not. The illogical yet endearing texting habits of parents (“All the best David, brackets ‘Dad’”) are frequently invoked when texts are ‘read out’ to the audience. Such conversational delivery has the feeling of a story regaled at the pub amongst close friends - and elicited a lot of genuine laughter from the audience - yet is able to be confessional and deeply emotive.  

Larson wittily confronts the obligatory pull of London, and the feeling that you need to have lived in the capital at least once to have really ‘lived’. While Eve’s search for Fassbender serves as the thrust of the show, the desire to reunite letter with actor becomes the means to examine the price - and value - of leaving the only place you’ve ever known.

Finding Fassbender follows an occasionally absurd but consistently funny route to explore the multitudes we all contain: as Eve says, ‘I am lots of things, I am’.

Originally written for Voice Mag