Dust at Soho Theatre was astounding (again)

Having seen Dust on an Edinburgh preview run at The Bunker in July 2017 I very keen when it returned to London for a full run at Soho Theatre. The Sold Out sign on the poster tells you that lots of other people wanted to see it too, no doubt enticed from the very positive reviews it had easily collected.

Possibly because it was a one woman show, or perhaps because it was staged in the smaller upstairs space, it was priced at a ridiculously low £14. No wonder it sold out.

The unusually early start time, 7;15pm, was something of a challenge, particularly as people kept talking in my 5pm meeting at work and dragged it out until almost 5:45. A bit of careful haste, due to the snow, allowed me to catch the 5:52 train and I was back on some sort of plan. I got to Soho Theatre Cafe in time to share a pizza and I finished that just before the doors opened. Careful positioning, from experience, got me into the theatre quickly enough to claim a seat in the front row which is exactly where I wanted to be.

Having seen Dust before I had some idea of what to expect and while there were no surprises in the main themes the sheer speed with which stories were delivered meant that I had forgotten many of them. I had also forgotten the  bewildering range and depth of those stores. It was often very dark, as you would expect a play about a suicide to be, it was often extremely coarse with, for example, a graphic description of oral sex, it was often frivolous such as when she coveted Top Show vouchers and it was often funny too. It was a rich hailstorm of ideas.

The great success of Dust is that it easily encompassed that wide diversity of ideas while dealing with the main theme, depression, sympathetically and realistically. We were living in the intersection between a young woman's chaotic life and her depression.

The great success of Milly Thomas was not only that she wrote Dust but she also played all the characters in it, from the rich aunt to the drug riddles brother. The characters changed as quickly as the ideas and it was a very impressive performance.

Dust had evolved a little since I first saw it and the addition of lighting and sound effects added the professional touch that turned it from a work in progress to a fully formed show.

I am not sure who impressed me the most that evening, Milly Thomas the playwright or Milly Thomas the actor. It was also nice to meet Milly Thomas the young woman briefly afterwards to tell her just how much I had enjoyed the performance.

Brutal Cessation at Theatre503

I had seen Brutal Cessation before, and not that long ago, but circumstances then had not been ideal and I wanted to give it another chance, particularly as it was playing at Theatre503 which is one of my very favourite theatres and is also where I first encountered Milly Thomas (as an actress in Animals). It was a late booking made on Saturday morning for a Saturday matinee performance. £12 secured the deal.

I got to Theatre503 the interesting way which meant catching a slow train to Queenstown Road Battersea then walking back through Battersea Park. The walk was leafy and damp and somewhat directed by the miles of crash barriers assembled for the fireworks display that evening.

The nicely timed walk got me to the theatre about ten minutes before the performance started. Time for a pint and I felt pleased with myself that I avoided that temptation.

Careful positioning in the waiting area got me my usual seat in the middle of the front row. The couple were already on stage but asleep. I kept quiet until the play stared.

Brutal Cessation was a series of scenes between a couple with no sense or suggestion of chronology. They could be played in almost any order. They change in mood from the playful to the threatening to the near absurd. Themes, words and attitudes are repeated, swapping from one person to the other as they do so. It is a study in how two people behave with their loves, fears, humours and failings.

Keeping it all together and making it utterly believable were the two excellent performances by Alan Mahon and Lydia Larson. The little movements and expressions made all the difference.

Without a story, Brutal Cessation required an appreciation of theatre-craft which the audience clearly had and the performance was roundly cheered at the end.

It was the sort of play that I enjoyed but found hard to articulate why afterwards. There is no simple conclusion to the sentence, "You must see Brutal Cessation because ..." but a long sentence would go on to mention the construction, the characters, the dialogue and the relevance.

Despite crossing Milly Thomas' path a few times I had never had the opportunity to speak to her before so I made the effort to do so after the performance. Sadly I was somewhat in awe of her and in a few brief sentences I think that all I did was convince here that I am either an imbecile, a stalker or even both. I hope that I'll get an opportunity one day to try and correct at least one of those impressions.

Milly Thomas was phenomenal in Dust and Brutal Cessation at The Bunker

This was my fourth encounter with the talented Milly Thomas and I made the trip to The Bunker specifically because of her. She wrote both of these Edinburgh sized works and also performed solo in one of them. Previously I had seen her act twice and seen one of her plays, Clickbait. It was Clickbait that made me want to see more of her works and so I happy paid my ridiculously low £15.

Dust came first. It came with a work in progress warning and Milly carried the latest version of the script with her but did not seem to rely on it very much. The presence of the script did not bother me in the least and it did nothing to mar the performance.

Dust started strongly and got better. It was narrated in the first person by a young woman, Alice, who had just died. What followed over the next hour was an exploration of how we got their and what the impact of her death was on the people around her.

Alice, as a ghost (presumably) went to see family and friends and Milly played them too, or rather she played them as Alice remembered them. Milly proved herself to be a formidable actress.

The play was naturally grim, death is like that, but there was a lot of humour in there too which had me laughing, giggling and even squirming at times. To give one example from early on, Alice examines her own dead body and has a close look at her vagina as she had never been able to see it before. While doing so she remembered all of the boys/men who had been in there. It was a long list and she wheeled it off quickly.

Dust was similar to Clickbait in the way that it moved violently between moods and ventured into sexual territories usually ignored out of embarrassment. It was a very different play and the similarities were more of house-style that anything else. It is a style that I very much like and I loved both plays.

Dust built neatly towards an ending with more discoveries and revelations and after an hour I was emotionally drained and in complete awe of both the play and the performer. Milly has already achieved a lot and is sure to achieve a lot more. Update: Dust has won a Stage award at the Edinburgh festival; I'm not surprised.

Brutal Cessation was always going to suffer following immediately after Dust. I had invested so much in Dust that I had little left for Brutal Cessation and I was unable to give it the attention it deserved. I could appreciate it but was unable to engage with it. That was my fault, not the play's.

It felt more like a work in progress than Dust had with a lot of clever techniques looking for a story to hang off, or it was there and I missed it. A couple were going through some issue that mattered a lot but probably not quite enough to break the relationship. The clever bit was the way that they used the same arguments against each other at different times and repeated the other's dialogue to do so. It forced us to look at both sides of their arguments at the same time.

Brutal Cessation was a competent play that suffered in following a brilliant one.

I hope that Dust comes back to London for a proper run somewhere and if it does I will definitely go and see it again. It was absolutely exactly what I go to the theatre for.

Cargo at the Arcola Theatre

I do not get to the Arcola Theatre as much as I would like. That is mostly my fault for living on the other side of London a problem made worse by me now working in the south-west too and no longer having the sort of job that I could sneak out of for a matinee performance. Despite those obstacles I still keep a close eye on their programme and Cargo attracted me as soon as I read about it. Then the reviews started to come in and I had to go.

A Friday suited me and I left the office in Teddington very promptly, slightly before 5:30pm, to catch the slow train to Vauxhall (all the trains that stop at Teddington are slow), the faster Victoria Line to Highbury and Islington and then the London Overground for the last two stops to Dalston Kingsland. I made good time and arrived there about 80 minutes after I left the office. It was much better when I could walk up from Kings Cross.

Arriving early gave me plenty of time to eat and drink before the performance, and I did both. The menu had expanded since my previous visits but they still had a risotto balls and salad thing that was much like the dish that I used to have, except it no longer had a warm stew at the bottom. The beers were a couple of crafty ales from the east end, a Shoreditch Blonde then a Foundation Bitter.

Then about a quarter to eight I headed downstairs to start the queue to Studio 2 only to find that it had been started by somebody even keener than me. Still, third place was fine.

I had been in Studio 2 many times but had never seen it like this. It was lined with metal to make it look like the inside of a container and the seating was two benches along each side. It was dark too.

I took a seat around the middle of a long side. In the darkness I could just make out some packaging in front of me. There was also a scruffy looking woman sitting on the bench opposite me who had to be one of the cast.

Then the lights went out and in the pitch black the play started. With us in the container and on the ship were two stowaways and young but street-wise woman and her younger brother who had little grasp on what was going on. When they were sure that they were at sea and had not been detected they were brave enough to put a light on and discovered that there was another young woman in there with them.

All nervous, scared and untrusting they quizzed each other about where they had come from, how they had got on the boat and what their plans were. Answers were cautious because of the lack of trust and we were not certain that we were being told the truth.

After the scene was set several surprising things happened but I'll avoid the spoliers and not say what they were. I can say what they did and that was make us look at the "problem" of refugees from different perspectives. I half expected a simplistic story that showed us that refugees are normal people too and, done well, I would have been happy with that but Cargo was more intelligent than that. It also explored the motives, ways and means that people get involved in various aspects of moving across borders. It was engrossing and entertaining as well as intelligent.

The characters with us in the container were very different people and that sparked all sorts of reactions as they parried with each other for the best outcome. Helping the sparks were some excellent performances. I'll, possibly unfairly, pick on Milly Thomas for praise as much as anything because I did not recognise her despite being very close to her only a year previously when she appeared in Animals at Theatre503.

Cargo was a good play and staging it in a dark container helped the experience and made it an event as well as a story. It appealed to me artistically and politically so it is no surprise that I really liked it.

Clickbait at Theatre503 was original, sparkling and surprising

There was no better way to spend my birthday than going to the my favourite theatre, Theatre503 in Battersea. I would have gone to see Clickbait sometime anyway but having a birthday made picking the date easier. It also made deciding to eat a decent meal downstairs in the Latchmere beforehand easier.

But first I had to get my steps done and the way that I did that was to get off the Victoria Line at Victoria and walk the rest of the way, going over Chelsea Bridge and through Battersea Park. That was a pleasant route, even in the dark, though the bridge tugged at my vertigo tendencies.

I knew that Clickbait was about a young woman involved in the porn industry so I was a little concerned about being the dirty old man in the audience and that was not helped when while we were waiting to go in one of the cast came out to make a phone call dressed in school uniform. It reminded me of the Japanese Lolita fashion as seen in Kill Bill Vol 1 and the V&A.

Despite my worries I sat in the middle of the front row as usual anyway.

The simplistic summary of Clickbait is that a young woman reacts to some revenge porn of herself being posted online by taking it head-on and posting more porn but this time under her control.

As the demand for this grew she called on the reluctant help of her younger sister and the enthusiastic help of her youngest sister (it was her in the school uniform earlier).

Clickbait was written by Milly Thomas who I had seen not long before at Theatre503, playing the young girl in the very wonderful Animals.

To give just a flavour of the content and the humour I give you this little scene. The girls' porn business is constrained by supply as only the oldest girl, Nicola, is producing any material so the youngest, Chloe, made some herself only for her sisters to realise that as she was only 15 that was technically child porn and they were in possession of it. They urgently demanded that it be deleted and, once done, also demanded that Chloe remove it from Trash too at which suggestion she looked at them disdainfully and explained that she had already done that because she knows how to use a computer as she is not thirty.

Humour played a great part in the play but there were plenty of other riches such as the relationships between the three sisters and between Nicola and her boyfriend, the way that Nicola flipped between hero and villain as the story evolved and also as we learned more about what had happened earlier, and the alternative view of the porn industry in a story about young women in porn written by a young woman (Milly Thomas).

The story went in two surprising directions thematically and chronologically. As the business developed the women took it in a new direction, and the three teddy bears at the front featured in this, and their attitude to the business changed, and that's where the big teddy bear at the back came in. We also learned more about the revenge porn incident.

The storytelling was fresh and original and I liked the way that the social media aspects, such as the comments below the videos, were read by the cast while wearing animal masks and moving oddly.

There was a feeling of ambiguity throughout, and that was also manifested as tension, as the hero/villain conundrum was explored but never resolved, nor could it be as there was not an objective position to judge the women's behaviour from.

Despite the subject matter this was a very clean show that you could take your granny too, though some of the language might upset her. There was plenty of porn but only the people on the stage could see it, though we could hear it. Sitting in the middle of the front row was not a problem.

Clickbait was very thought provoking because of the subject matter and the way that it approached it, and it was also hugely entertaining because of the constant stream of funny lines. All three girls, Georgia Groome,  Amy Dunn and  Alice Hewkin, were excellent. The support from Barney White as all the men was excellent too.

I do not mind getting older when I get birthday treats like this one.

Animals at Theatre503 was very funny, very dark and very wonderful

Theatre503 had become one of my very favourite theatres simply by presenting a series of unusual, challenging and entertaining plays. Animals was another one of these.

From it's description, it was firmly in the Dark Comedy category and so it already appealed to me and it proved to be more than that.

The logistics were boringly simple this time. I arranged to work in the London office that day and then made my way to Battersea. It was a little too far to walk all the way so I started off on public transport but left that when a couple of kilometres away to walk the last part.

Theatre503 was above a pub, the Latchmere, and I went there fist for something to eat and a beer. Like most gastro pubs they were a little light on the vegetarian options but I only needed one decent choice to be happy, and they had one. The picture I took (I am not always that sad) showed asparagus, egg and shaved Parmesan. A welcome change from the days of veggie lasagna as the only veggie choice.

Meal over I helped myself to a second pint and made my way up the steep and twisting stairs to the theatre to collect my ticket and to wait in comfort of the theatre doors to open. It is a cosy reception area and is one of the many nice things about Theatre503.

Once inside and in my favoured front-row position the view was much less cosy as I faced a wall of distressed and unloved steel.

Animals was set in a derelict housing estate in a dystopian future. Three of the estate's kingpins of the shadow economy were three old ladies who, we learned, had officially gone past their sell-by date. The avoided termination by hiding away and using false papers and they served their local community through sexual favours and their part in the distribution of food.

It was a strange and nasty world made the stranger and the nastier by these ladies' role in it. They had adapted well to the harsh circumstances but the State still posed a real threat to them.

This threat became more real when an Inspector turned up to check the people living in the block. He was both an executioner and a victim, working on a zero-hours contract and needing to get result to be paid. These results included terminating people living beyond their contracted time, that time being set by their social usefulness.

The Inspector had his daughter with him. She was approaching eighteen when her social usefulness would be first judged and until then was forced to live as a child. She was both curious and naive. She was also in great danger.

That rich setting let the play spread its tentacles in all directions from hard politics to protocols around who sits in the armchair, from what it means to be useful in society to what gloves to wear when giving hand-jobs.

The initial setting was both dark and funny and I would have been quiet happy if it had continued in that vein so I was absolutely thrilled when it got funnier and much darker. The darkest secret was well hidden, despite being in plain view at the very start, and was gradually revealed through comments and implications. As a plot structure it worked brilliantly, as did all the other things going on in the play.

It was good to see the three main roles going to older women and they were all marvellous at being the granny you always loved as well as prominent crime-lords. The inspector gave a convincing portrayal of a man trapped by the rules that he did not question and his daughter was the delightful little-girl-lost (physically and intellectually).

Animals was a great deal of fun and made some interesting and provocative comments about politics and society too. I could watch plays like this forever and it looks as though Theatre503 can keep producing them too.