Elephant - Bush Studio Theatre
Nov 12, 2022 18:33:50 GMT
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Dave B, cavocado, and 1 more like this
Post by Steve on Nov 12, 2022 18:33:50 GMT
Saw this yesterday at the Bush, and it's run is ending today, and it was so GOOD it really deserves a further life, like the one Arinze Kene's Bush show, "Misty" got at the Trafalgar. It is one of the most emotionally impactful shows I've seen all year.
Some spoilers follow. . .
Like "Misty," it's about the pressure of "identity," of being forced to conform to other people's perceptions of what you are (as well as many other things) and it utilises music symbiotically and brilliantly to tell it's story.
This is Anoushka Lucas's debut play (she was Laury in the Young Vic's Oklahoma), and it's one of the best one-person plays of the year, in a year of amazing one-person plays, along with "Cruise" and "Prima Facie," although it is more like the former, personal and purposeful, than the latter, a powerhouse performance showcase more manipulative than meaningful.
Arinze Kene's "Misty" was rocking, loud and raucous, depicting an overwhelming sense of a self being torn apart. It was poetic and direct, possessed one of the single most powerful images in theatre, of Kene trapped inside a balloon.
Lucas's show is the opposite, indirect, yet no less powerful. It is gentle and conversational. It depicts a pliant sense of an identity being moulded in an apparently unthreatening way. It focuses on the smallest things, like a finger on a piano, tracing sound waves bouncing around a piano and into our ears. It conjures the sound of Lucas's alter-ego, Lylah's mother's melodious french accent and the taste of her visiting uncle's Jamaican speciality dish, and when Lucas plays the piano and sings, it carries all these sensory words into an even more intimate and melodious place.
But the whole thing is a massive sneak attack, that builds to some of the most impactful and emotive theatre I've seen all year.
Everyone deserves to see this, so I hope it comes back. It's only one hour, but it is an immensely moving, intimate and revelatory hour. 5 stars from me.
Did anyone else catch this?
Some spoilers follow. . .
Like "Misty," it's about the pressure of "identity," of being forced to conform to other people's perceptions of what you are (as well as many other things) and it utilises music symbiotically and brilliantly to tell it's story.
This is Anoushka Lucas's debut play (she was Laury in the Young Vic's Oklahoma), and it's one of the best one-person plays of the year, in a year of amazing one-person plays, along with "Cruise" and "Prima Facie," although it is more like the former, personal and purposeful, than the latter, a powerhouse performance showcase more manipulative than meaningful.
Arinze Kene's "Misty" was rocking, loud and raucous, depicting an overwhelming sense of a self being torn apart. It was poetic and direct, possessed one of the single most powerful images in theatre, of Kene trapped inside a balloon.
Lucas's show is the opposite, indirect, yet no less powerful. It is gentle and conversational. It depicts a pliant sense of an identity being moulded in an apparently unthreatening way. It focuses on the smallest things, like a finger on a piano, tracing sound waves bouncing around a piano and into our ears. It conjures the sound of Lucas's alter-ego, Lylah's mother's melodious french accent and the taste of her visiting uncle's Jamaican speciality dish, and when Lucas plays the piano and sings, it carries all these sensory words into an even more intimate and melodious place.
But the whole thing is a massive sneak attack, that builds to some of the most impactful and emotive theatre I've seen all year.
Everyone deserves to see this, so I hope it comes back. It's only one hour, but it is an immensely moving, intimate and revelatory hour. 5 stars from me.
Did anyone else catch this?
