Review: Hear. Speak. See. (Expial Atrocious, GM Fringe)

July 2022
Digital Event

The Greater Manchester Fringe runs throughout July, with performances at various venues around Greater Manchester and online. Once again, I’m going to be reviewing a selection of the productions on offer for this blog, and also for The Festival Show on North Manchester FM.

The next show I saw this year was a digital production, and it was part of the GMF Digital Events strand on this year’s Fringe programme.

The production I’m going to be reviewing now is available to stream with a ticket purchase from the Greater Manchester Fringe website throughout the month of July. I’m reviewing Hear. Speak. See., an immersive drama by Expial Atrocious. The radio version of this review will be broadcast on The Festival Show on Friday 29th July, but here’s the blog version…

I mentioned in my previous review of Eliane Morel’s Disenchanted: A Cabaret of Twisted Fairy Tales that the digital theatre productions on this year’s festival programme are very varied, both in terms of their content and the ways they use the storytelling techniques facilitated by digital technologies.

A brief comparison of Disenchanted and Expial Atrocious’s Hear. Speak. See. reveals this variety beautifully. I’ve not really got space to do that comparison, so you really should watch both of these shows yourself to find out! Seriously.

Hear. Speak. See. is a short film production that uses video technology to create an unsettling immersive experience for the audience – and it’s clearly intended for individual viewers to stream in their own time, as it’s a show that very specifically denies a communal audience and privileges the perspective of the individual viewer.

Allow me to explain…

Hear. Speak. See. takes place at a dinner party. ‘You’ have been invited and have been told that it will be a dinner party like no other. And ‘you’ are the viewer – the film is shot from a first-person perspective, so the viewer becomes the guest at the dinner. When the three cast members address the fourth guest, they are addressing you, the viewer. It’s an immersive experience, but also a gloriously unsettling one.

And make no mistake, ‘gloriously unsettling’ is the best description of this piece of theatre, which packs a lot into its surprisingly short running time. It really is an immersive piece, and so it feels like you are at that dinner party for a long time.

The other guests at the party are played by Nic Lawton, Ez Holland and Faye Bingham (who also cowrote and codirected the piece). They are dressed in white costumes and are greeting one another – and you – as though this is a long-awaited catch-up with old friends.

But it clearly isn’t a catch-up with old friends. Not only do you (as you are now a character in the play) don’t recognize the others or understand the nature of the gathering, but there’s something off about the conversation. The interactions between the other three guests don’t flow smoothly, and there’s a tendency to non-sequiturs or almost nonsensical responses. The dynamic between the three is also hard to determine. At times, they chat to one another as though they see each other regularly, but at others they seem more distant, as though they are reunited after a long time. The only thing that is consistent is that they are determined the dinner party must happen, and that you must remain seated at the table with them.

In case it’s not clear from this description, we’re in the world of absurdist theatre with Hear. Speak. See. This is a piece that defies straightforward explanation or narrative exposition. Although some snippets of sound recordings at the beginning – which will be revisited towards the end – offer a tantalizing hint of context or backstory, there is a continued denial of both logic and progression. There isn’t a ‘story’ here, and nor can we really talk about ‘themes’, though ideas of justice and retribution echo through the performance, and there is a glimmer of exposition in the development of Bingham’s performance towards the end of the film. Ultimately, though, the film resists easy interpretation.

Characterization, too, is vague and uncertain. Lawton’s character appears to be the host of the event, and there are a number of references to the event being held in her house. (Of course, this doesn’t make complete sense, as at one point Holland moves around you and, as your perspective follows her movements, lights at the edge above her clearly reveal the edge of the set, undermining what little verisimilitude remained.) Holland’s character begins as a more gregarious, friendly fellow guest, but there are undertones of something more brittle beneath the surface. Bingham’s character almost appears to be in control at points, and is the most unequivocally hostile towards you (and towards Holland and Lawton’s characters too, at times).

Generally speaking, the hostility underlying Bingham’s interactions, and the party as a whole, isn’t overt. The more appropriate term would be menace, I feel. And, of course, this sense of menace, coupled with the explicitly ‘party’ setting encourages some comparison with Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party. And this comparison would not be unfavourable either.

In addition to the verbal absurdity and confusion, which creates some of the atmosphere of menace, there is physical absurdity. The acting here is never naturalistic, but at times it becomes even more artificial – more consciously a performance – as the three actors suddenly move in choreographed synchronicity, or a physical altercation is played out through stylized but non-contact stage moves. There are brief, nightmarish cutaways in which the scene transforms into one of pain and agony, the performers contorted and screaming, for mere moments without explanation.

The performances here are really impressive. A highlight for me was the scene in which Bingham, Holland and Lawton eat plates of tomato bruschetta and salad leaves. That’s it – that’s all that happens – and the scene goes on for so long it’s downright uncomfortable to watch (and this is one of the moments in the play that really distorts the audience’s sense of the play’s overall running time). This scene really is a thing of absurd, disturbing, almost grotesque beauty, constantly gesturing to something beyond the performance – a theme? a backstory? an interpretation of events? – without actually explaining it.

Towards the end of the piece, we begin to get a clearer sense of what might have provoked or enabled the party to be thrown, as well as an idea of the role Bingham’s character plays in this. However, this isn’t really an answer, as our understanding of what, exactly, the party actually is continues to be elusive. Who or what Lawton and Holland’s characters are, and why they are involved is even more uncertain as the play moves towards its conclusion.

If, like me, you’re a fan of the Theatre of the Absurd, then Hear. Speak. See. is definitely one to watch. It’s a gem of a piece – visually stylish, bafflingly disturbing and with pitch-perfect performances from the cast. If Theatre of the Absurd isn’t something you know much about, or if you don’t count yourself as a fan, I’d still say give it a go. The short running time (despite it feeling way longer) allows a somewhat easier introduction to this style of theatre than full-length plays, and who knows? that visual style and those pitch-perfect performances might just win you over to the absurd side.

I know I quite often end my reviews by saying that the piece I’m talking about is a recommendation or a strong recommendation. And I make no apologies for that – I see some good stuff! But in this case I’m going to go even further and say that Hear. Speak. See. is one of my highlights of this year’s festival, and I’m very glad I got to see it.

Hear. Speak. See. is available to stream throughout the month of July, as part of the GMF Digital Events strand on this year’s Greater Manchester Fringe programme. For the full programme of Greater Manchester Fringe shows on this year, please visit the festival website.

Review: On Me (Dangerous to Know, GM Fringe)

Wednesday 27 July 2022
Seven Oaks Pub, Manchester

The Greater Manchester Fringe is on throughout the month of July at various venues around Greater Manchester. And, once again, I’m reviewing a selection of the productions on offer for this blog, and also for The Festival Show on North Manchester FM.

On Wednesday 27th July, I was at the Seven Oaks pub in Manchester to review On Me, a play by Dangerous to Know. The radio version of this review will be going out on The Festival Show on Friday 29th July, but here’s the blog version…

On Me is a new play by Manchester-based theatre company Dangerous to Know. Written by Caroline Lamb and directed by Helen Parry, the one-act play takes place on the set of a true crime documentary. Actors Shona (Leah Eddleston) and Christian (Alexei Papadopoulos) are playing the role of victim and perpetrator respectively, acting out scenes that will illustrate the documentary’s narrative of control, abuse and rape. Dangerous to Know were very careful to give content warnings prior to the performance, and this was a sensible decision. On Me is a challenging piece to watch – discomforting, even – and while I expect Fringe theatre to pose that challenge, I appreciated being prepared for this one.

The play follows through various scenes in which Shona and Christian prepare for, and perform in, scenes from the documentary. This creates a nested quality to their characterization that helps to develop certain themes as the show develops – and I’ll return to those themes in a bit more detail shortly. But there’s a blurring of character lines at times that causes some unease. When Eddleston delivers the line, ‘Get Maryse some pickled onion Monster Munch!’, she is an actor playing an actor referring to herself by the name of her on-screen character. Is this potentially confusing for the audience? Yes – but that’s sort of the point.

In the first half of the play, Shona and Christian have to act a rape scene. Right up until the moment the director (played by Brandon Worrall) shouts ‘Action!’, they have been interacting as friendly colleagues getting ready to do a job together. An earlier scene had involved Christian throttling Shona – very grim to watch, but after the ‘Cut!’ is called, the actors revert to their professional conversation, complimenting each other’s performance and talking about agents and other roles.

The rape scene – and I should say that Dangerous to Know judge this scene well, giving the scene power but not prolonging it for the sake of it – is a different experience, both for Shona and Christian and for the audience of On Me. It resonates with a different intensity, and it isn’t defused in the same way.

The fallout from this scene is handled well. Lamb’s writing and Parry’s direction maintain an almost palpable tension throughout the rest of the play. As an audience member, I felt the atmosphere shift in the room, and that shift weighed on the following scenes.

This is a very deliberate choice by Dangerous to Know, and it’s impressive the way the production is able to evoke feelings in the audience that mirror those of the characters on stage. Shona and Christian’s relationship – they are clearly attracted to one another and are increasingly flirtatious – is changed by the performance of the scene, and this will form the main narrative conflict of the play’s second half.

As I’ve said, On Me explores some serious themes, and these are handled with complexity and nuance. What – exactly – the fallout from the performance of the rape scene is doesn’t become apparent right away. Papadopoulos, particularly, is tasked with holding back the difficult emotional and psychological effects of the performance until events push him to verbalize something of this, though even then he can’t fully explain everything. It’s an impressive performance from Papadopoulos, as it’s not an easy task to play a character who is deceptively sanguine without simply being deceptively sanguine!

Eddleston’s character goes on a different journey, and the performance here is crucial to the creation of an almost oppressive sense of paranoia that settles on the second half of the play. In some ways, Shona is an ‘everywoman’ (in the most cynical sense), and, indeed, she points this out to Christian later in the show. The experiences she has had, the experiences her loved ones have had (some of which is presented on stage when Shona receives phone calls), are sadly commonplace. The experiences of the unseen Maryse – the ‘real-life’ victim whose story forms part of the documentary (unseen, but voiced by Verity Flynn) – are an extreme case, but the show folds these into the story through the sense of blurring of Shona with Maryse, and through Christian’s anxiety that Shona (and potentially others) will see him as Maryse’s rapist after his performance on camera.

On Me is a play that resists easy answers or reassuring conclusions. It steers into the messiness of life with a boldness that is both refreshing and uncomfortable. As well as complexity, the play gives us ambiguity to think about. A good deal of this is placed on the shoulders of Sean McGlynn’s character. Listed only as ‘The Clapper Loader’, and given no dialogue until the play’s final moments, this character is nevertheless highly visible throughout. He appears in almost every scene, often upstage of the actors, but his lack of engagement with the others creates a sense of uncertainty that, again, can feel almost oppressive.

I mentioned earlier that the ‘nested’ performances here are being used to work through certain themes. Some of these – trauma, relationships, how to be a ‘good man’ knowing all the things bad men do – are discussed explicitly in the dialogue, as these are questions Shona and Christian must confront due to the nature of the material in the documentary. Moreover, their burgeoning personal relationship requires them to at least acknowledge these questions, though they may not agree on the answers.

For me, though, it was a largely unspoken theme that proved to be the most thought-provoking. I had an unusual experience at the end of On Me – as the actors returned to the stage to take their bows, I felt a strong pull of concern for Eddleston and Papadopoulos. I hoped the actors were okay, given the scenes they had just had to perform.

On the one hand, this is simply testament to the actors’ abilities. I was invested in Shona and Christian as a result, and thus I blurred the actors with the characters slightly. On the other hand – and this was the thought that lingered longest – On Me is about precisely this idea. We watch true crime, or challenging dramas, in the expectation that we will see violence, murder and rape. What is the impact of having to enact scenes such as this over and over again, particularly if certain scenes hit personal triggers? And would the actors on stage in On Me feel the same blurring effect that the character of Christian worries about in the narrative?

In the end, On Me raises these difficult questions and refuses to give us easy answers. Uncompromising writing from Lamb, careful direction from Parry, and impressive performances from all the cast work together to create a piece of challenging theatre that will stay with you long after it finishes. If you get chance to see On Me on its final dates at the Greater Manchester Fringe – or at a future performance elsewhere – I definitely recommend you check it out.

On Me is on at the Seven Oaks on 27th-30th July, as part of the Greater Manchester Fringe. For the full programme of Greater Manchester Fringe shows on this year, please visit the festival website.

Review: Disenchanted: A Cabaret of Twisted Fairy Tales (Eliane Morel, C ARTS, GM Fringe)

July 2022
Digital Event

The Greater Manchester Fringe runs throughout July, with performances at various venues around Greater Manchester and online. Once again, I’m going to be reviewing a selection of the productions on offer for this blog, and also for The Festival Show on North Manchester FM.

The next show I saw this year was a digital production, and it was part of the C ARTS strand on this year’s Fringe programme. C ARTS is a curated independent arts programme that delivers work for the Edinburgh Fringe, which is then made available online via streaming throughout the year. Although produced for the Edinburgh Fringe, C ARTS productions are now included on the programmes of other fringe festivals, including the Greater Manchester Fringe.

The production I’m going to be reviewing now is available to stream with a ticket purchase from the Greater Manchester Fringe website throughout the month of July. I’m reviewing Disenchanted: A Cabaret of Twisted Fairy Tales, a performance by Eliane Morel. The radio version of this review will be broadcast on The Festival Show on Friday 29th July, but here’s the blog version…

Disenchanted is a one-woman show (though not a one-character show by any means), written and performed by Eliane Morel. It opens on a title card, telling us we’re in Paris in 1699, and a voiceover introduces us to the salon of Madame d’Aulnoy (played, as all the characters are, by Morel).

There are a good number of digital theatre productions on this year’s GM Fringe programme. Some are part of the C ARTS strand, and some have been produced for the GMF Digital Events strand. I saw three of these productions back-to-back this week, which was a good way to dispel any preconceptions that ‘digital theatre’ is a homogenous thing or that it doesn’t offer endless opportunities for innovation and creativity. The three digital theatre events I saw this week were all very different, not least in the different film formats they used for their productions.

Morel’s Disenchanted is what we might call ‘lockdown theatre’, the sort of digital theatre we saw a lot of in 2020-21. By this I mean, it uses a faux video conference format that is self-conscious about its restrictions. In this case, Morel draws a historical connection to make the ‘lockdown theatre’ format make sense. Paris has been struck by plague, and Madame d’Aulnoy is unable to invite visitors to her salon. She consults the Magic Mirror (also played by Morel, and appearing in split screen) who introduces her to ‘magic’ that will allow her to speak to visitors remotely. It will also allow Madame to ‘swipe down’ on the – presumably – mirror to contact her guests for the evening – all of whom are characters from fairy tales.

I’ve referred to this format as ‘faux’ video conferencing, as of course it isn’t actually recorded on a conference platform. This is a film – performed, recorded, edited – and so when Madame ‘swipes down’, we are actually cutting to a different scene and Morel is able to let her characters interact with one another as a result.

‘Lockdown theatre’ was born of necessity, but it always contained the potential for intervention and innovation. Morel explores this potential through the visual techniques used to enhance the performances, including animation, overlaying, colourful backgrounds and subtitling. The overall effect is a film that, while giving a nod to the social restrictions in which it was created (and a nod to historical parallels to those restrictions), is a rich and enjoyable visual experience that feels complete (i.e. not like we’re missing out on something).

I seem to have said a lot about the format there! I think watching three productions in quick succession – and I will be reviewing the other two shortly as well – really draws your attention to the varied ways performers and companies use the technologies available. That said, I really do need to say something about the actual story of Disenchanted now!

Madame d’Aulnoy has invited five characters from fairy tales to attend her (virtual) salon and tell their story through the medium of song. The Magic Mirror is excited to hear that they will be meeting ‘princes and princesses’, but Madame is quick to disabuse him of this. She has invited minor characters, ones who don’t usually get to tell their tales. The intention, it is clear, is to offer a different perspective on well-known tales. As this is something many other writers have done over the years, I was curious to see whether Morel really could give us something fresh.

And I was not disappointed! There is some real originality in Disenchanted, and some surprising ‘twists’ on the tales.

Our first visitor/performer is Olga, one of Cinderella’s stepsisters. We’re probably on familiar territory here, as there have been a number of retellings of Cinderella from her stepsisters’ perspective over the years. Morel’s Olga is a lively creation though, singing us through her story of poverty, social climbing, jealousy and resentment. The performance is comical, particularly as it ends with a coda explaining that Cinderella and Prince Charming later decided to ‘consciously uncouple’ from the Royal Family and wondering if Prince Charming’s ‘disreputable divorced uncle’ might offer another opportunity for Olga and her sister to marry into royalty after all. But Morel’s character here is also charmingly human. I enjoyed the fact that she avoids rewriting the story to make the ugly sisters the victims of the story, but rather to add context to their circumstances that might explain – if not excuse – their mistreatment of their stepsister. Olga is spiteful and selfish, but she’s also rather engaging in her resilience and ambition (and Cinderella does come off as just as ambitious and self-preserving as her sisters here). It’s hard not to enjoy Olga’s gleeful plan to ‘live the life we choose / In our gigantic shoes!’ at the end of the song.

From here, Morel’s takes get a little less familiar and a lot more surprising. We meet Gertie, the goose liberated by Jack in Jack and the Beanstalk, who sings about ‘going free-range’ and starting a union of golden egg laying fairy tale geese. The unexpected message of her song is that ‘you are the controller of the means of your production’.

Next, we meet Mr Wolf from Little Red Riding Hood who offers us a very different interpretation of events from that story – and it’s this sequence that necessitates the warning that this is not a show for children – that is a lot of fun. And then the final performance is from Sleeping Beauty, the only princess who appears in Disenchanted, who reminds us that, while she is the title character of the story, much of Sleeping Beauty is about things done to the princess, rather than things done by her. In a rather polemic take on the story, Morel reframes Sleeping Beauty’s encounter with Prince Charming as non-consensual molestation (actually, that’s not really reframing it, is it? that’s actually what happens) and has her sing ‘Listen, pal, #MeToo’ before realizing that other fairy tale princesses have endured similar abuse.

For me, though, the absolute highlight of Disenchanted was the character that came between Mr Wolf and Sleeping Beauty. ‘Angelique’ (Morel supplies a name for a usually nameless character) is one of the dead wives of Bluebeard, and she tells her story – and those of Bluebeard’s other victims – in a plaintive song set to the tune of ‘Sway With Me’. It’s a genuinely haunting and moving number, and the effect is heightened by the use of visual editing techniques to overlay and impose multiple faces on screen, reminding us that this is the story of more than one woman. Morel’s make-up here is unsettling – particularly coming immediately after the comical stylings of Mr Wolf – and it’s striking that this is the only character who doesn’t interact with Madame d’Aulnoy or the audience during their appearance.

Morel has an impressively operatic vocal range, which she puts to good use in the performances in Disenchanted, varying the style as the songs and stories require and dipping into more informal tones for comedic or conversational effect. Again, a highlight for me was the ‘Angelique’ number, in which Morel uses her distinctive vocal style to striking effect.

Overall, Disenchanted is a fun cabaret-style story that encourages us to think differently about well-known fairy tales. The way certain themes from Morel’s reimaginings weave together, and the way she incorporates bits of Madame d’Aulnoy’s own biography, give Disenchanted a coherence that makes this show both a cabaret and a narrative in its own right.

I really enjoyed this production of Disenchanted – it worked really well as a piece of digital theatre. I believe that Morel has performed a live version of the show this year as well (in Australia), and I would love to see that version as well. Seeing Morel transform from one character to the next without the aid of video technology would be something to see! Those of us outside Australia may have to wait for this opportunity, but in the meantime, I highly recommend checking out the digital version of this show.

Disenchanted: A Cabaret of Twisted Fairy Tales is available to stream throughout the month of July, as part of the C ARTS strand on this year’s Greater Manchester Fringe programme. For the full programme of Greater Manchester Fringe shows on this year, please visit the festival website.