Chapter 271: Behind the Scenes of The Last Hamlet

Following on from my previous post about Lost Dog's genius The Last Hamlet at Sadler's Wells East, here's a summary of the post-show discussion for those who couldn't make it. I only caught it by chance myself, and have done my best to capture the gist, working against the clock at the mo.

After the performance on 5 November, Rob Jones, Associate Artistic Director of Sadler's Wells, hosted a Q&A with Ben Duke, Hannah Shepherd, Miguel Altunaga and musician Anna B Savage, with BSL interpretation by Erin Hutching.

Spoiler alert: There are some substantial spoilers ahead, including discussion of the ending. I'd recommend seeing the show first if you can.

Rob began with a few questions of his own to get the ball rolling, including the obvious one: Why Hamlet?

Ben explained that a couple of years ago he'd started seeing Hamlet everywhere. He was also having something of a midlife moment, wondering about his place on stage. He quoted Withnail and I: "There comes a time in every man's life when he realises he will never play the Dane." He felt he'd passed that milestone himself. But then again, if he created his own production, why shouldn't he play Hamlet?! "I sound like a total egomaniac," he joked. But of course he didn't. Ben Duke may have hit the genetic jackpot in the talent stakes, but he works at it too. Still, he said there was a mixture of ego, midlife reflection and curiosity about why this particular character seemed to be everywhere. Isn't that the frequency illusion at work, I wondered. A bit like seeing circus everywhere, right?!

As for how the production evolved, Ben described a rather chaotic process of going back to Shakespeare's text, realising how little he actually knew it (he got a first in English Lit, so his "not knowing" is clearly relative) and gathering brilliant people around him to experiment. That reminded me of Lydia Harper saying something similar (Chapter 268). It's a strange play, he reflected, about inaction, in which not much happens, yet it's become one of the most famous works in literature.

They began writing, reading and messing around with ideas. Some elements from an early week of development, about a year ago, survived into the finished production, including Anna's song towards the end. Ben subsequently rang her to ask whether she'd come and perform it live.

Miguel confirmed the chaos. Working with Ben was constantly playful, and they were still discovering things in the production, exploring how much power, effort or delicacy each scene needed. Sometimes scenes worked brilliantly in isolation but not in the context of the whole show, so they had to be sacrificed. Only to reappear later.

For instance, Ben revealed that Miguel's singing in the final scene had only been reinstated the previous night, for performance number twenty. Anyone who'd seen the show earlier wouldn't have seen it.Miguel described days when nothing seemed to happen, everyone experimenting in different corners of the rehearsal room, trying out movements or texts. The important thing was to remain open to those moments too.

And then Ben passed the mic to Anna: "Well I feel like I've won a competition to be here." She described being inspired by this extraordinary new world, joking that music was held together with "Pritt Stick and hope". I loved that! Everything happening around her seemed so impressive. "I feel so lucky to be so up close to so many incredibly talented people. It's just magical."

That struck a chord. It's one of the reasons I write this blog. I see inspiring performances, meet extraordinary people, and somehow some of that energy passes through. It lifts me up. And perhaps by writing about it, I can pass a little of that energy on.

Rob then asked Ben something I was particularly interested in, given the way he combines literary, theatrical and choreographic talents. How did he know when to introduce the dance, working with Shakespeare's text as well as his own writing?

Ben replied that it was an endlessly fascinating and problematic question, one that lies at the heart of his creative process. He starts with stories and words. In the past, he'd wait until the narrative was clear before creating the choreography, but the problem was that this tended to happen about a day before they were due on stage, and dance takes longer to make. Now they begin creating movement earlier, even if they're not yet sure where it belongs. One duet, for example, had initially been developed with quite a different atmosphere before finding its place in the show.

I really liked how he talked about the instinct to move from words into something more emotional and physical, of "falling into movement". And then the question he asks himself: "When is the moment to stop talking and start moving?" That made me smile. One of the themes of the play is how to get Hamlet to just stop talking...

Then came the audience questions.

The first concerned the ending. Had they always intended for Hamlet to end up in a box?

Not exactly. Ben had been interested in shifting the revenge narrative towards Ophelia, so that she became the one facing the decision of whether to kill Hamlet. But then, if she did, would that make her as bad as him? They tried various possibilities. The idea of boxes came quite early, including a sort of magic trick in which Hamlet would disappear among them as they were shuffled around, until nobody knew where he was. Just another soft toy in a box. I imagined they would need a trapdoor underneath, Columbo-style (I'd just watched the episode with Billy Connolly as a magician at my sister's, for auld lang syne!). I digress. Sorry. At one stage Hamlet continued talking from inside the box, but that didn't feel right.

"Shut up, just shut up! Enough." And so the idea of silencing him took shape.

Another audience member asked about the extraordinary set design. This was my question, I thought, having just had my set-designing niece staying over, whose work has been an eye-opener for me over the years. Only this audience member took it one step further, observing how the boxes work as a literal representation of the compartmentalisation of Hamlet's mind. I was relieved I hadn't put up my hand.

Ben immediately credited the brilliant Soutra Gilmour, the set designer. They'd initially talked about walls. The fourth wall, the Berlin Wall, all the important walls they could think of. I wondered also if the wall on the Mexican-US border came to mind at one point (see show!). I also thought of Dad again. How he'd brought me back a piece of the Berlin Wall when it collapsed. Where did it go? And then Soutra suggested boxes. Suddenly the ideas came flooding in. Hamlet's compartmentalised mind, his emotional baggage, the weight of history he carries around with him.

They considered making the structures more solid, but cardboard boxes worked so well in rehearsal that they stayed. And it turns out Ben had been moving house that summer, with his own life packed into boxes. I don't want to say more here for fear of further spoilers, but the play and innovation with those boxes is again, well, just genius. And I loved that once again Ben emphasised the importance of collaborators who take an idea and offer something that pushes it further.

Next came a question about theatre director Katie Mitchell, whose BBC interview arguing that we should stop staging Hamlet is such an integral part of the production. Had she been invited to see it?

Yes, they'd written to her, although Ben admitted to being rather nervous about what she might think.

Soutra had sent him the interview, and he'd been struck by the sheer directness of Mitchell's argument. She dispenses with Hamlet in one fell swoop and is utterly unapologetic about it. It was like doing away with the Mona Lisa of literature and putting something else in its place. So radical, something heroic about that. And it gave Ben a way into the work. If he was Hamlet, and this was a personal attack, how would he respond? "I'm not sure whether we rebutted it successfully." I beg to differ.

Then came the tongue-in-cheek one:

"How hard was it to acknowledge where Shakespeare got the idea from and bring in The Lion King into this?" Ben laughed about ordering a "very flammable Simba costume" from Amazon early in the process. The connection had seemed ridiculous, but then The Lion King, like Hamlet, is everywhere. Even if people don't know Shakespeare's play, they probably know the Disney version. And the costume also seemed to capture something of Hamlet's arrested development and childishness. So they decided to riff on the idea and see how far it could go.

Another audience member said that seeing Lost Dog's Ruination a couple of years ago had changed their life. God, I haven't heard of that one, I thought with a pang. They'd noticed how Ben's work explored human beings as complicated, morally ambiguous creatures, rather than simply heroes and villains.

Ben agreed this was a recurring preoccupation. In Ruination, for example, Hannah had played Medea, traditionally seen as a monstrous figure, but who decides whether someone is good or bad? Shakespeare, he argued, is extraordinary at portraying complexity, where "darkness and humour sit together". Well, you nailed that here, I thought.

He even questioned whether we are unified individuals at all.

"We are just all multiple. We are so many people." Someone might be a hero one moment and an "absolute arsehole" the next. It makes it very difficult to condemn or glorify people, and that complexity fascinates him. I also love the lack of judgement implicit in that. It speaks volumes instead about an artist's curiosity and openness.

With the clock ticking, and Rob doing a great job of timekeeping, the penultimate question concerned BSL interpretation and how it had been incorporated into the movement and technical work. This was again something I would have asked. Ben's answer was refreshingly candid. Late. Very late.

They've worked with Clare many times, and he gave a great shout-out to her extraordinary preparation and commitment. Yet the actual integration of her signing into the stage action had come together in a rush that very afternoon. I couldn't believe the time frame.

It had been abundantly clear in the show that there had been discussions about how to bring her into the space, rather than leave her stranded in a corner, and make her part of the action. But his goal was for this to go further, if only time and money allowed.

Finally, an audience member asked about the audience participation. This was the point when I thought, clowning, hey presto! They admitted to having initially thought, "Oh here we go!" when it was announced, but had found it worked beautifully. Ben explained that the idea had come early, although he'd temporarily lost his nerve before returning to it. Part of the thinking was about Hamlet's extraordinary relationship with the audience. He keeps talking to us, creating an unusual intimacy, a conversation across the fourth wall. Ben wanted to explore how to recreate that. And then there was the practical question of giving all those soft toys voices. Why not get the audience to do it? "You pay for a ticket and then you have to do the acting." What can I say? In a world of budget cuts and tortuous Arts Council applications... Genius! Encore ;) 

Right, now to pack for Prague and Cirk La Putyka. I can't believe it's already 3pm. In twelve hours I'll be getting up to head to the airport. The circus is calling. Come follow the band.

Chapter 270: Remember, remember... Lost Dog's Last Hamlet

Remember, Remember the fifth of November...

Only I clean forgot. Maybe that's turning 50 for you. Or simply the prospect of back-to-back late nights teaching, a surprise house guest and a trip to Prague coming up this weekend. On Sunday night, contemplating the week ahead, I'd mentally pegged Thursday for the one early night, until a reminder from Carolyn popped up. "Really looking forward to Thursday night, Luce..."

And then I remembered. Doh! How could I forget?!

I'd booked to see Ben Duke's The Last Hamlet at Sadler's Wells East. From Rufus, the slipper thief of my previous post, to Lost Dog's Great Dane, there seems to be something of a canine theme developing here. Although, as it turns out, this particular dog is more of a big cat...

The last time I saw Ben Duke on stage was well over a decade ago in Paradise Lost (lies unopened beside me) at Battersea Arts Centre. A one-man show, and it was mesmerising. I hung on every word. There was magic in that heady combination of the language, concept and physical movement.

I had gone thanks to another circus-loving Lucy, Ribchester, whose book The Hourglass Factory opens with a suffragette swinging on a trapeze, and who had also written numerous circus reviews for The Herald up in Edinburgh. This had been our night "off" circus, only to find Ben ascending a rope at one point and doing a spot of invisible juggling at another. There is no escape, we joked.

It was that summer I saw Barely Methodical Troupe's Bromance and Cirk La Putyka's surreal Dolls, both up at the Fringe. Ben Duke subsequently directed BMT's Kin, and now BMT's Charlie Wheeller is appearing in Cirk La Putyka's anniversary show Okamžik, which I'm heading to Prague tomorrow to see. Funny how these threads keep coming together.

Having seen The Last Hamlet, words fail me. It was bonkersly brilliant, but part of its five-star magic lies in its unpredictability, and it would be sacrilege to spoil that. The set design by Soutra Gilmour was ingenious. "Thinking outside the box" maybe not quite the right expression here. Or perhaps it is. You'll have to see for yourself. The Q&A in my next post will offer some insights into the creative process, although that's probably best read after seeing the show. What I will share here is the impact it's already made, and the premise, which is simple: Hamlet is going to be staged for one last time, and soft toys play the other characters.

As we took our seats, a radio on stage played Kylie Minogue's "I Should Be So Lucky". Well, we'd hit the jackpot. And it took us back, like a tape spooling time in reverse. Whatever disasters are going on in our lives, Carolyn and I always seem to bring out each other's inner child. I promptly knocked over my glass of water everywhere. Muppet. I looked round at the audience behind us, partly in embarrassment, partly out of curiosity. A performer a couple of rows back who I recognised from the very first show I'd seen at that Edinburgh Fringe. A few others had that National Circus student vibe. An alert, engaged audience, as showed in the Q&A after. 

Thursday had been the only possible night to go, but in a happy coincidence it was also the one with a post-show discussion and BSL interpretation. After seeing deaf actor Olivia Burton-Laws make her professional debut in The Penelopiad at York Theatre Royal, I'd been particularly looking forward to the BSL interpretation. I loved the way Ben welcomed Clare's signing into the centre of the performance, making it part of the choreography, particularly given how little time they'd had to integrate it, as we learnt in the Q&A.

I expected to laugh, given the absurdity of the premise, but not to the point where I feared I wouldn't be able to stop, only for Hamlet to pull the rug from underneath us and my stomach to drop like a dead weight. And Anna B Savage's singing. Spellbinding. Another reason to see this show.

I did not expect to well up thinking about Hamlet's reaction to news of his father's death. I had been abroad, at the end of the phone, when my own father died. The same moon shining over the port of Tarifa would have been watching over him in Hampshire, I had reflected. A lunatic thought? Another moment later on was also a grave trigger. All I will say to that is bloody hell, and thank you Hannah Shepherd, your Ophelia nailed it. And Miguel Altunaga, wow, escalofríos ¡aché! Anyone reading this, you have to see them in action.

But somehow watching the performance shifted a weight that's been hanging over me recently, in this season when the veil thins. An existential crisis isn't madness. Sometimes it's just a cloud of grief passing over. If only Hamlet had known that and sat with it a little more. I want to sit with this performance a little longer, too. It had hallucinogenic qualities, like theatrical LSD. We emerged in an altered state (!) marvelling at the world around us, its luminosity.

Leaving the theatre, Carolyn and I waited ages inside for the electronic rotating poster to cycle through the year's productions and come back to The Last Hamlet, so we could snap our moment for posterity, then again when we discovered one outside too, collapsing in giggles at the ridiculousness of our fangirling. We then registered that we hadn't heard a single firework as we passed a Chihuly-inspired (or created?) glass flower in the meadow, glowing with urban embers. We soaked up the towering architecture and the magnificance of the metropolis, feeling like Alice in Wonderland. Approaching the escalator down to Stratford station, we spotted triffid-like sculptures blinking at us (Okamžik means in an instant, or in a blink of an eye) and ended up going backwards down the escalator taking selfie videos to capture them in the background for the hell of it. The precariousness of our descent set us off, exploding in laughter, all over again. 

You can't take us anywhere.

But thankfully Hamlet did.

Cheers. Encore.

Photo credit: Christophe Raynaud de Lage from https://theaterscene.com

Chapter 269: LEAP Circus' Damaged Glory

LEAP Circus has a new project in development called Damaged Glory and I went along to a studio at the Roundhouse on Friday more than a little curious. It was a sunny afternoon and so I hopped out of the tube a stop early to stroll through Camden, so full of colour and quirks. It never changes. Colourful buildings with papier-mâché signage, and the punks sitting on the lock bridge, careless legs swinging over the wall, while keeping a sharp weather eye out to charge tourists for photos. Like some tableau vivant throwback to the 80s. Punters pay for the authenticity of the performance, a contradiction in terms perhaps, but it adds colour, and I think there's something of a damaged glory about those spikes, in hair, studs and demeanour. I love people watching.

Onto the Roundhouse, not edgy (no corners anyway), and as I walk up I bump into a circus friend, also en route. "Like the new hair, Lu," he says. In that comment I feel like circus Lucy is back. A new era. I'd chopped it all off the day before and consequently until then had felt rather vulnerable, ambivalent. "Tell that to my husband!" I joke. Well, it's not sooo short this time, and he is still talking to me. The last time was in Tahiti, you see, on our mega sailing trip. A visit to an expat French hairdresser had resulted in a gamine pixie crop, and my husband simply blanked me for 24 hours. It was only the sheer comedy of his reaction, not to mention the attention of a young Greek sailor next to me at dinner that night, that kept my sense of humour going through the spectacle of Heiva that followed, a festival celebrating Polynesian heritage where hip-gyrating beauties in straw skirts tossed their tumbling, lustrous locks from side to side. You have to laugh sometimes. That's the dance we weave in relationships, that balancing act between wanting to please those we love and being true to ourselves, the course we steer.

Back to the present, at the studio, there was already such a rush of well-being in recognising so many familiar faces from the circus community who had come to see the work in progress, and meeting some new folk too, helping out with the production and in the audience, as we waited around in the foyer to be ushered in by producer Anna Duncan.

Lydia Harper took the floor and introduced the piece, which had been a couple of months in gestation and then six days in rehearsal at the Roundhouse. Lydia had taken inspiration from the book Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory by Raphael Bob-Waksberg, a collection of short stories that explores and celebrates the complexity of human relationships in all their glorious comedy of errors and reconciliations. They had clearly had a ball over the past week rehearsing, as came across in the Instagram footage leading up to the showing, and Lydia observed that the secret was simply "just to work with very nice people".

The cast was made up of performers from different backgrounds, spanning dance, aerial and acrobatic disciplines. Their different skills combined beautifully with the energy between them to explore a whole variety of relationships, whether nurturing or heartbreaking, across nine separate scenes. The format echoed that of the book, but there were threads and developments running through too.

The Chinese pole was initially central to the space. I loved the innovation in the ways the performers mounted it, whether a solo climb, in duet, or using other performers gathered around it as a spiral staircase up. I wish I had the technical terms to do justice to all the tricks and bouncy energy of Josh Hoffman springing from move to move. Josh has previously performed with Ockham's Razor in Public, a piece exploring community, play and mutual support, and I liked the echo of that here, with the performers quite literally helping one another reach new heights. Then Maddie, bringing a quieter strength to the pole, her movements sinuous, almost river-like, before an inversion led to a sudden drop backwards, friends at the ready to catch her. Trust made visible.

Later, a beautiful duet on pole between Josh and Rebecca had both power and tenderness as they balanced each other out. I'd last seen Rebecca in Mimbre's Weight(less), where she was lifted by her fellow performers. Here, at moments, she was the one basing Josh, lifting him up the pole. I loved seeing that reversal, the roles of lifting and being lifted shifting once again.

The performance also illustrated how far we go to please each other and when to let go. Adam Havsky had come onto my radar this summer through his solo circus show Norman's Big Day Out, which I've still yet to see, but I was delighted to get a taste of his clowning here. There was wonderful comedy in his breakdance and body-popping moves to get Dilly's attention, not least those puppy-dog eyes pleading for her approval. His facial expressions were half the fun, at other moments quizzical, conveying as much as the movement itself. Dilly, meanwhile, watched with a sanguine, almost benevolent detachment, graceful and composed, but not quite drawn into his world.

It reminded me of a moment in Kook Ensemble's Sand where Myles tries to entertain Dilly through juggling at the breakfast table. In that piece, the heartbreak comes as Dilly becomes absorbed in the world of her younger self, drawing the younger couple into her play while Myles is left on the outside looking in. Here the circumstances were quite different, and the comedy much broader, but there was something similarly poignant in watching someone trying so hard to connect.

Adam's antics made me laugh, but it was when sparks began flying between Dilly and Maddie that her whole demeanour changed. The serene composure gave way to childlike delight, her graceful movements now animated by a shared sense of mischief and play.

With a rope suspended between them, they both moved into handstands, passing the rope between each other's feet and looping it around, before Maddie took to the air in her specialist discipline, aerial rope, set to Obsessions. It was stunning. At the end, high up on the rope, the bottom was held taut by the rest of the group as she slid down, doubled over, visually spectacular. Simple movements also touched me, like a seated hug, eloquent in its simplicity.

Perhaps rivers were already running through my mind because I'd just finished Elif Shafak's There Are Rivers in the Sky, in which Zaleekhah leaves her husband and moves onto a houseboat on the Thames, finding an unexpected connection with Nen, the woman who owns it. There was something of that sense of possibility in the energy between Dilly and Maddie, of relationships changing course and carrying us somewhere unexpected. Or perhaps it's simply that the books we read flow into the way we see the world.

As well as romance at play there was bromance, not least in the light-hearted one-upmanship in dance moves between Josh and Jason, which really made me smile. Jason comes from a dance background and I believe this was his first time working on a circus show. It was lovely to see him picking up the energy of the ensemble, and a few tricks along the way. His artistic eye clearly contributed to the creative mix too, not least in a wonderful sketch he'd drawn of the whole cast, rather Quentin Blake in style, which LEAP Circus later shared on Instagram. It captured something of that same playful spirit.

And then there was Rufus, the invisible, mischievous dog, slipper thief and serial absconder. There is a whole short story devoted to his perspective on life in Bob-Waksberg's collection. I smiled as the last Rufus I'd seen at the circus was a uni friend of mine who'd come along to Revel Pucks this summer, but what really made me laugh was the entreaties of the cast as they tried to bring Rufus to heel. He added to the rich tapestry of relationships that enrich life, and I appreciated that thread of absurdity running through the scenes as love, friendship and acrobatics played out around him.

Perhaps that's part of what I enjoyed about this showing. There was room for the ridiculous as well as the touching, for moments of spectacular physical skill alongside small, recognisable human gestures. Not everything needed explaining, nor would you expect it to after six days in the rehearsal room, and yet it felt complete, as well rounded as the performers themselves.

I came away smiling, glad to have spent an afternoon in such good company. I loved Lydia's vision for the piece, and the way this wonderful team of artists had brought it together, each contributing their own skills, personalities and creative energy. What stayed with me was the warmth between them, the humour, the genuine care and, above all, the pleasure they clearly took in playing together.

On the way home I downloaded Bob-Waksberg's collection on Audible, and I've been listening to it ever since. It dovetails rather nicely with another collection of short stories I picked up on my recent trip to York, Clarice Lispector's The Burned Sinner and the Harmonious Angels. Both writers have a way of finding the surreal in the everyday, exploring the peculiarities and complexities of human relationships. Perhaps that's what I enjoyed so much about Damaged Glory too, seeing those absurdities and tendernesses given physical expression.

And I haven't even mentioned the music, which was brilliant. What a soundtrack, from Florence + The Machine's The End of Love to Marina's Obsessions, Freddie Mercury's Living on My Own and Irma Thomas's Anyone Who Knows What Love Is. Daria's video footage captures the spirit of the showing beautifully, and I love that it also gives a flavour of the music, so integral to the mood and movement of the piece. It's a wonderful glimpse of Lydia's vision and the collective creativity that brought it to life.

I can't wait to see where Damaged Glory goes next.

Director: Lydia Harper
Producer: Anna Duncan

Cast (alphabetical by surname): Madeleine Fuller, Adam Havsky, Joshua Hoffman, Jason Kandaiah, Rebecca Solomon, Dilly Taylor.

Video: Daria Izworska 

Photos courtesy of Lydia Harper

Cast from left to right: Jason, Rebecca, Dilly, Josh, Adam, Maddie

Chapter 268: Out of the Wings, Cuban Circus, et Voilà!

"Oh hi, Connie, I last saw you as a minion on stilts..." I was at the Cervantes Institute last week for an evening celebrating Spanish and Latin American theatre in translation organised by Out of the Wings, a collective of academics, researchers and theatre practitioners that brings Spanish and Portuguese language theatre in translation to the English speaking world. The evening was chaired by one of the founders Catherine Boyle, who had been my supervisor doing post grad research years ago, and the reason I was going along. Out of the Wings sprung out of a project with the RSC in 2004 bringing Golden Age Spanish plays to life including Catherine's translation of the romantic farce "House of Desires" by pioneering 17C Mexican nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. It was a lovely surprise to see Constanza Ruff as one of two actors reading excerpts in translation from  plays from Spain, Argentina, El Salvador and Cuba that evening, as I'd last seen her in summer as part of the Leap Circus kids' cabaret in Woolwich (see Chapter 258). She wears many hats. 

Now I was hearing the actors read from Cuban Abilio Estévez' play "The Great and Wondrous Circus Finally Closes Its Doors" in which a group of circus performers are faced with the fact that their director is finally closing down the show, an allegory for the collapse of contemporary Cuba through a poetic lens. I need to look into this more and read the play at some point, handy that the play's translator lives round the corner from me and has a spare copy. 

It took me back to a national theatre festival I went to in Camaguey in 2004 and the staging of Vade Retro (an exorcism term to expel the devil: "Vade Retro Satana"), written in early 60s by Cuban José Milián. The play was steeped in the tradition of the Theatre of Cruelty, a product of the turbulent years following the Cuban Revolution. The version I saw was directed by Gaspar González, nicknamed El Chino, who also played the Ringmaster. All I remember was a sense of combative energy and wondering what Milián made of it, sitting in the audience too. Gaspar took me under his wing while there, showing me the sights and introducing me to legendary cabaret singer Candita Batista. Oh, I loved her instantly, she was a force of joie de vivre. She had left Cuba amid racial discrimination and gone on to perform internationally, reminiscing about sharing stages with Josephine Baker and earning the name la vedette negra de Cuba, before returning to the island after the Revolution. She serenaded us with songs, the three of us sang together too, and she regaled us with stories, her wall graffitied with messages of love from fans who'd travelled the world over to visit her. There is a legend that if you ever drink from a tinajón, the lopsided earthernware water jugs around, that it seals your fate to return to Camaguey, but the years have past, I have yet to return, and Candita is no longer there. 

After hours in the evening all the actors would decamp and informal cabarets and games would carry on in La Barraca, over maybe a thimble of rum. One of the actors from Vade Retro, a clown on a unicycle, was wearing a necklace of white, black and green jade beads. As I complimented him on it, my stomach dropped with the realisation he would inevitably give it away to me. And so he did. Along with a lottery ticket that won me a turn in the spotlight, to the amusement of all, camping up my turn as a gringa. I rarely wear the necklace now for fear of destringing it, but it still sits on my dressing table in a small glass box in a stand, my circus rosary cum Cuban talisman. 

So it is striking to find these worlds overlapping again. Maybe it's a sign. Maybe the wondrous door is still open. 

VOILA festival 2026

Out of the Wings does fantastic work bringing page to stage and every last Friday of the month holds a round table at Kings' College London. One of the questions from the audience that arose that evening at the Cervantes Institute was whether there are other similar theatre projects in London translating other languages and cultures. I thought of Voilà Festival, that starts today. I came across the festival first thanks to Sharlit Deyzac and Leonor Lemée whose Two Tongued Theatre Boy's Club (See Chapter 160) was on at Jacksons Lane Postcards Festival when I was doing "Shhhh!". Voilà, as the name suggests, was then a French-English bilingual Fringe festival at the Cockpit which widened its frontiers in response to Brexit and now has Arts Council funding so really is a global celebration of theatre. Still produced by the Cockpit theatre, it starts today, running 2 - 26 November at venues all over London with 101 shows and events, performed in 60 different languages by 450 international artists. This includes Autrian-British circus theatre company Brainfools show Balance, an outdoor version of which I caught at Certain Blacks Ensemble Festival this summer (See Chapter 251). Catch it if you can! 

Voilà Festival 2-26 November 2026: www.voilafestival.co.uk

Out of the Wings: www.ootwfestival.com

Chapter 267: On Margaret Atwood and Tales of Sisters & Circus Handmaids

Get thee to a nunnery!

Next week at Sadlers Wells East Ben Duke and his company Lost Dog is bringing The Last Hamlet to Sadlers Wells East. Ever since I've saw his Paradise Lost at the Battersea Arts Centre, I've wanted to see more. Around the time I booked the tickets I received the news of the death of a sister. Not my biological sister, but a religious sister who I'd know at the school I had gone to for sixth form as Sr Lizzie, and then twenty years later met as Sr Ann (reverting to birth name, thanks to Vatican II, rather than the one appointed when taking vows) at the Bar Convent, where she was running the guest house, one of York's hidden gems. A convenient stone's throw from the railway station, by the iconic Mikelgate, on the corner of Blossom Street and Nunnery Lane, the entrance has a discreet sign on the glass of the entrance doors, welcoming people of all faiths or none, and those of us swinging somewhere on a pendulum. The rooms are modern, in the large glass atrium above a beautiful mosaic floor is served cracking cooked breakfasts and cream teas, the chapel hosts LGBTQI+ Mass once a month, and their Living Heritage Museum is state of the art interactive and fascinating. 

We had first gone up to York a couple of years ago to see another sister, Mary Ann, up in the retirement home on the same street, and when my daughter heard the news this time her immediate response was, effectively, "get thee, and me, back!" We had also been drawn out of curiosity to the Bar Convent by the fact that it housed the relic of the  hand of St Margaret Clitherow, a Yorkshire martyr from Elizabethan times, which is on display in the chapel there. Margaret was executed for her Catholic faith and harbouring priests, despite (or, it's rumoured, because of) her step-father, Henry May, being  the Lord Mayor of York. She refused to plea, to avoid her children having to be called upon at her trial, and so was condemned for her silence to a horrific death by being pressed to death by heavy weights, under her own front door, on the bridge over the Ouse. She was rumoured to be pregnant too. When Elizabeth I heard about it she was so horrified at what had been done to the woman that no Catholic was ever executed in that way again. Mary Ward, the founder of the order of sisters at the Bar Convent, was only a baby at the time but grew up among courageous Catholic women for whom Margaret was a spiritual hero, and she went on to found the educational movement that grew into a world wide network of Mary Ward schools such as mine. 

On the train journey up this time, a dog that looked like a pint sized wolf hound, the kind that would be lolling by a medieval fireplace, led us to chatting to the couple across from us on the train. "Do you know the difference between a nun and a sister" asked the wife, when we were discussing travel plans.  I did, not thanks to 15 years of convent education, but due to an Instagram post the week before. She had seen the same one. Nuns, if you're interested, are those who live an enclosed life, mainly in silent contemplation. Otherwise they are sisters. Hamlet wanted to silence Ophelia's voice, I reflected, and that way madness lies. 

From tales of sisters to handmaids... another Margaret is one of my literary heroes: Margaret Atwood. So when I saw that The Penopliad was being staged that night at the Theatre Royal I booked us in. Last time round it had been Legally Blonde. As we took our seats, we saw on stage several red ropes hanging down. Circus skills would be woven into Penelope's yarn, clearly. And they were, both in the innocence of the maids at the beginning, two actors particularly skilled in aerial, climbing, looping and generally hanging out with the others, relaxing, a stark mirroring to later hanging in twisted positions in a dramatic reveal at the end. 

Penelope walked in initially. A Grecian beauty with grey hair swept up into a Grace Kelly chignon, slender in a white jumpsuit that gave serious goddess vibes. Somewhat familiar, it was only later I twigged I recognised Amelia Bullmore from the BBC series Riot Women. How apt. Here again she was to turn the tables. Penelope told her tale from Hades, a barren space, and her perspective on the Odyssey was not just a retelling of herstory, but that of her maids. Flashbacks took us to her childhood. A rope turned serpentine oracle gave a nebulous prophecy that led to her father trying to drown her initially, leading henceforth to a fear of bridges.  But she survived and was betrothed, her mother, a Naiad, instructing her in the art of fluidity when navigating obstacles. Olivia Burton-Laws, the actor playing the Naiad combined both spoken word and BSL which added a striking grace and power to the choreography and her role in this tale about women making their voices heard. The reference to the river struck me, not only as a shadow of Clitherow, but also because I'm reading Ursula LeGuin's "EarthSea" chronicles, where the river again is a border between mortality and immortality, and cosmic equilibrium. And I am also listening to Elif Shafak's "There Are Rivers in the Sky" on Audible where rivers both source and contain memory. These connections are flooding my stream of consciousness, and writing this is maybe my way to figure out how it all comes together. 

The rest of the all female cast portrayed not only Penelope's maids, and Odysseus' nursemaid, but all of the male characters, bar Telemachus in his infancy, a touching puppet that was a dead ringer for the puppet used in Tao of Glass (See Chapter 243). So much so that I borrowed a programme for a quick flick through, but couldn't see any mention of puppeteers Sarah Wright or her mother Lyndie. I still wonder. In  Tao Phelim McDermott talked about the theatre ghosts we as audience members bring with us, and that still resonated clearly. 

There was dark humour and deftness in the casts' mimicry of male energy, whether the chameleon Odysseus, alternating between tenderness, anger and impassive stoicism, or the suitors' ribald behaviour and poses struck. The latter was often light relief as the story grew ever darker for the maids. Like lambs to the slaughter they because the distraction employed by Penelope to fend off the suitors' unwanted advances. When Odysseus returns, Penelope is given a sleeping draught, while he then orders Telemachus to hang them, so she has no opportunity to explain her strategy, nor they to speak up and defend themselves. In this story, the silence of the mother figure, her complicity in terms of the strategy she employs to survive herself, is what condemns her "children", rather than saves them. Atwood gives the maids the last word though, as in the afterlife they turn to the Furies who grant them their plea to haunt Odysseus, in Hades and in each of his subsequent reincarnations. He will never be free. And Penelope will never be spoken to by them again, left alone to miss the company of her "doves". 

There was something about the production that felt very much a zeitgesit in terms of the history of women in York. Whether Catholic recusants, witches or prophetesses (we also thoroughly enjoyed the jumpscares of the York Dungeons with the likes of Mother Shipton and Isabella Billington) time and again we were coming across tales of maids and strong women, independent, rebellious and defiant, deemed a danger to the status quo. 

Victims of the patriarchy maybe, but not passive ones.  Margaret Clitherow refused to betray those she sheltered, Mary Ward challenged the constraints of religious life for women (she was also imprisoned by the Catholic Church at a time when they preferred their orders of women orderly, enclosed), and Atwood's maids refused to let their story rest with the version told by their masters. Myth or otherwise, the truth of their story lives on, not so much a cautionary tale but more of an empowering one, albeit acknowledging the uncomfortable truth that women can also be complicit in silencing others. We walked back under the light of the full moon and got to our room, slightly disappointed to be assigned to "St Winifred" rather than "St Margaret" opposite. Then we googled the story of the saint and found she was patron of women spurning the unwanted advances of men. Someone up there was having a laugh...


Post-script

The morning after, after regaling Mary Ann with our adventures, my daughter had one more question: "If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would it be?" Without a moment's hesitation she replied "Prague! It's meant to be the most beautiful city in the world and I would so have liked to have seen it." Ironically, I'm going there next weekend. "I'll send you a postcard" I said. "Are you taking Catherine?" she asked. "God no!" I said. And then, a tad guiltily, I qualified that I was going with an old uni friend Jane to see Cirk La Putyka's 15th anniversary show Okamžik (meaning a moment, an instant) for a weekend getaway that will no doubt go in the blink of an eye. The show is running until mid November and if you can get there, go, it looks phenomenal. We had last seen the company and their production Dolls (see post here) over a decade ago at the Edinburgh Fringe (the only time I have been actually!), the same year Barely Methodical Troupe's show Bromance (see post here) was also at the Circus Hub. BMT's Charlie Wheeller has now taken his iron Cyr ring over to Czech Republic and is in Okamžik too, which is how I heard about the show. Their Christmas show will be FoolMoon. The wheel has come full circle you could say... 

Lead photo credit: Pamela Raith, as featured in Guardian review of The Penopliad: 

www.theguardian.com/stage/2026/oct/17/the-penelopiad-review-margaret-atwood-feminist-york-theatre-royal

PPS: also spotted on a poster at Theatre Royal in the interval that Lost Dog's Juliet and Romeo, which is also on my wishlist, is on tour there 20-21 November. If you fancy a break away you know where to stay. And if you do go up, I also recommend a trip to York Gin, round the corner from The Shambles. Last time I came away  with a Viking inspired Spring notes gin. This time I went for the seasonal "Mad Alice" Blood Orange-infused limited edition. Fun fact: apparently Mad Alice is Europe's number one rated tour guide. If your tastes are more catholic, York Gin also have an apple-infused gin from the orchards at Ampleforth Abbey. Will definitely have to return for an encore...! 

Chapter 266: Itch by Teatronas

"Mum, why are you dressed head to toe in black?"

The answer was simple. It had been a full-on day and I was going to see a show about the fear of death. Somehow shaking off the day, and the clothes, and dressing for the evening ahead, brings its own energy. I was off to see Lithuanian performing arts company Teatronas at Jacksons Lane with ITCH, a performance directed by Gildas Aleksa. Described by its creators as a theatre essay on the fear of death, it draws inspiration from psychotherapist Irvin D. Yalom's book Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death.

The premise intrigued me. What if our everyday anxieties, our isolation, our busyness, our relentless pressure to achieve, were really manifestations of a deeper fear of mortality? As a compulsive overachiever in a perpetual boom-and-bust cycle of energy, there are patterns that need breaking and questions that need answering.

I've never considered myself particularly afraid of death - educated by Irish Catholic nuns for 13 years, it's really the thought of an afterlife that scares the bejesus out of me! In the past few years I've accompanied both my parents at the end of their lives. The night before my mother died in January, I felt her energy flood the house and wrap me in a warm blanket. The morning after she died, as I approached the bedroom where she lay, my chest constricted, but still I crossed the threshold. The experience struck me with the thought that when we go, no one can do it for us or come through with us. We cross alone. I can't describe why, but that thought gave me some consolation and made me feel stronger.

But there is a fear that remains. A sense of accountability for this life. An exhaustion, even. The feeling that time is slipping away and there is still so much to do, or strip away. Increasingly I feel the pull to pull away. To just be still. But not that evening. I was looking for another perspective.

I arrived minutes before the performance and grabbed a ticket and took a seat. On stage, two guys were warming up in a twilight of muted lighting. Minimal, metropolitan, dressed in suits but bare-chested, with slits of fabric, purple perhaps, at the knees of one and the elbows of the other. I liked that. It was a strange world, somewhere between the familiar and the surreal.

A young woman, the flyer, performer Milda Jonaitytė, swinging on a rope, held a balloon. She spoke of the landmark moment when a child first recognises their own mortality as a helium balloon slips from their grasp and floats away, beyond reach. A first experience of irrevocable loss. It struck a chord, especially if, like me, you were haunted by the beautiful film The Red Balloon as a child. But in a neat inversion, her balloon didn't float away. As she turned upside down, it thudded to the floor. Suddenly we were in an upside-down world. Clever.

Then another balloon, apparently with a life of its own, followed an acrobat across the stage. However often he kicked it away, back it came. Later, a juggler appeared to throw a ball which, through a genius bit of sleight of hand, went nowhere at all. There was something wonderfully playful about these tricks, and something unsettling too. Death is like that balloon, or that ball. However hard we try to chuck it away, or ignore it, it keeps coming back into play.

The circus skills were a joy to watch. Kasparas Bujanauskas performed an extraordinary juggling solo lasting over half an hour. It sounds impossibly long, but the repetition took on an almost meditative, playful quality. There was something deeply soothing about the rhythm, the different patterns, the seemingly effortless control, the endless movement. But baked into that serenity was a certain anxiety about the inevitable drop. There were several. Yet each was recovered so smoothly, with a flick of a toe or a leisurely scoop from the floor, that it was difficult to distinguish the mistakes from the choreography. Nor, perhaps, should we. The carrying on is the point. 

There were moments of wonderful comedy too, with acrobat Džiugas Kunsmanas weaving in and out of the juggler's movements, interrupting his carefully constructed patterns. The interventions were at once a distraction and a source of delight, and I didn't see a drop. There was the pleasure here of watching extraordinary physical skill responding to another human being intervening, Loki-style. 

Then there were surreal moments. At one point, the acrobat folded himself over, feet above his head, until his back seemed to take on a life of its own. It twitched and writhed in strange, almost St Vitus' dance-like movements, the itch of the title, an uncontrollable agitation. It took me back to seeing Punchdrunk's immersive The Masque of the Red Death at Battersea Arts Centre, years ago. But to me the back also resembled a faceless puppet, the hands on either side like ears, a body onto which we could project the features of someone we'd known, or unknown.

The spoken word was harder for me to grasp. The words tumbled out quickly, one over another, and I struggled to hold on to them. I wanted the flyer to slow down, to leave more space between her thoughts, to give me time to reflect. But maybe that was the point, and I just needed to go with the flow rather than try to anchor myself to a pebble in the riverbed of words. A thought had drifted in early on: They're so young. So full of energy. What do they know of death? Of that paralysing exhaustion? And yet I know death doesn't respect age, and neither does grief, as I was reminded when she spoke of her own experiences.

One striking image I carried away was of the flyer standing blindfolded in a two-high, directing the base beneath her through shifts in her weight towards the rope in the centre. It was funny, clever, but also took me back to Songs of the Bulbul, a dance performance I saw earlier this summer, based on a Sufi tale of a caged songbird. When the bird is blinded, it can no longer see the world beyond its cage, but in that darkness its song becomes something deeper, almost a prayer. Its physical world contracts, yet something within it is released.

The creators of ITCH suggest that our relentless rush to achieve might itself be an expression of our fear of death. Watching the endless juggling, the frenetic itch, the distractions, the anxious torrent of words, I could see what they meant. We keep ourselves busy, perhaps because stopping would mean confronting the limits of our time.

In the face of death, perhaps our only response is to create. Not necessarily something grand or lasting. Not a monument to ourselves, or another achievement to add to the list. But something that taps into what lies beyond ourselves, something we can share with others.

Ironically, I almost didn't write this up. I'd jotted these notes down on the tube home. Everyday life intervened the moment I walked back through my front door. Traitors. Ironing. Lesson prep. I dropped the ball and was loath to pick it up. I could just give myself a break for once. But I'm learning. And maybe the trip down to the shell of my parents' house this week for a final clearance, and the raw grief that surged back up, brought that home. 

And perhaps the measure of a life isn't how many balls we managed to keep in the air, but how we pick them up after the drop, before the ultimate performance comes to an end.

Photo credit: Teatronas teatronas.lt/en/itch-show/

And if you are London-based this weekend, check out London Juggling Festival at throwntogether.org which is being covered over at thecircusdiaries.com/

Chapter 265: Mimbre - Weight(less) and the Power of Lift

Flee from despair. That was the gist of a post from a yoga account that started following me on Instagram yesterday. I was feeling a bit despondent. I haven't played the harp for five years, and haven't practised regularly for well over a decade, but I've offered to play at a public event for a girlfriend next week. I'm supposed to be slowing down, and yet there I go again, taking on something outside my comfort zone. Imposter syndrome rears up. "I'm not good enough." Maybe the only answer is indeed to leap on a tube and flee to the other end of the Northern Line.

Which is how I end up back at Jacksons Lane for the second half of its Mixed Doubles evening with Joli Vyann. The evening pairs two very different pieces, both built around what happens when one body has to trust another, and both originally made for outdoor spaces. And here, after the interval, it's Mimbre's Weight(less).

I'm handed a small orange sack tied to a rope and invited to whisper all my worries into it. I leap at the chance. Not so the woman a couple of seats away, who is struggling with hers. Not that she doesn't have worries, but that she'll be overheard. "Couldn't that be your worry?!" another audience member offers helpfully. Possibly that does the trick, along with the assurance that no, there really isn't a hidden microphone in there, it's not that kind of show. She turns her head and whispers her secret into it. I love these sorts of interactions. The magic of make-believe. We all buy into it and so, by common consent, make it so.

On stage, two performers, Silvia and Julia, watch as a third, Rebecca, struggles with an enormous orange sack bound with rope. I'm reminded of the nets of empty plastic water bottles Teatro en Movimiento wore on their heads in their promenade at Ensemble Festival, protesting water contamination. Is this a flotation device? A lifeboat? By the sea, all worries wash away pops into my head. It was written on a piece of driftwood we hung in our cockpit when we were sailing. That's the driftwood of associations that floats around my mind.

Neti, neti. Not that, not that. It is simply an orange sack with a cord, and Rebecca's effort looks Herculean as she staggers around the stage, as though she really is carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. Silvia and Julia look on with attention and concern and try to help, and a gentle comedy unfolds as the sack rolls from one body to another and each of them ends up underneath it in turn. Then somehow Rebecca is swallowed inside it. Over the course of the piece, the other two help her dismantle the load, revealing smaller orange conical boulders about the size of a large rucksack. They seem to get progressively lighter until one can be balanced in a single hand. The weight becomes less. Weight(less). 

And the orange matters too. It is such a joyful colour, carrying something of creativity and optimism that contrasts with the bulk of the burden. Even before the weight has physically become lighter, the orange stops it from ever looking bleak.

Then there is the sense of lift in the performers themselves. Silvia Fratelli is one of the founding members of Mimbre and has the mischievous assurance of an experienced flyer, Julia Chan the steadiness and strength of a base with a gymnast's fluency, and Rebecca Solomon moves with a dancer's dexterity. But these qualities pass between them, just as the weight does, and the strength belongs to all of them. The base supports, the flyer rises, the middle holds and is held, and then everything changes again.

There are beautiful moments in the shapes they create, whether mirroring each other's movements in inversions or balancing on shoulders and chests in human-pyramid formations. I love the springs, the inversions, the play with shifting weight, whether bodies or sacks. And then there are moments of sheer exhilaration, like the three-high. It is impressive in terms of skill, of course, but what strikes me more about this human tower is the height. I come to watch circus to walk among giants, because in doing so they lift me up in turn. That's what I love about a three-high. The potential and possibility. On my own I go faster, together we go further. And higher.

It also leads into one of the most graceful and inventive dismounts I have ever seen. And then there are moments of holding each other in a group hug where you can feel the audience breathe into the moment with them.

What I love too is the way they look outwards. These aren't acrobats sealed inside a succession of tricks. At one point Julia holds Rebecca in her arms and looks out at us with wry amusement, and we all get it. Each of them has that sense of humour and shares it with us. They're in conversation with the audience. Perhaps that's the outdoor DNA of the piece coming through, the instinct to catch the eye of whoever happens to be there and bring them into the game.

How did it make me feel?

Alive. Joyful. Light-hearted. On our own, we can end up shouldering the weight of the world. When we shoulder each other, we can begin to dismantle it.

And as the load lightens, what happens to our little sacks of worries? The performers draw the ropes onto the stage, open some at random and listen to each in turn, and somehow my own cares, harp and strings attached, feels lighter too. Then all Joli Vyann joins Mimbre on stage and the evening comes together for a final bow. 

As I make my way into the foyer, Kaveh turns and asks me what I thought of the show. My reply is immediate. That is why Lucy Loves Circus.

It makes me smile because Kaveh is the first person I ever met through circus. He led a circus experience afternoon I went to with a dozen girlfriends, and in one photograph I have of us all, there I am at the top of a human pyramid; in another, I'm basing.

Maybe there is something in that. Joli Vyann has explored the trust and shifting balance between two people in a relationship while Mimbre opens that out into something bigger, the strength that comes from a group carrying and supporting one another. I love the skills, of course, but I love the people who make it too. The trust, the support, the conversations afterwards about what we saw, how it made us feel and the stories that brought us there.

And after half an hour watching three women quite literally lift each other up, I float home.

Link to video trailer and further footage: mimbre.co.uk/productions/weightless/

Lead photo credit: Daniel Robinson