Julio Torres, former Saturday Night Live writer and star of the HBO series Fantasmas, brings his awkward, imaginative wit to the stage at Soho Theatre. Seated at a desk with his sketchbook and crayons, he begins a whimsical lecture on colour theory.
What you learn from Torres is that blue represents law and order, red stands for anger and rage, and yellow evokes childlike happiness. From these primary colours, he builds a symbolic language that extends into secondary shades. He uses these associations to tell stories like describing the airport as navy blue while recounting the time he was detained for not having a travel visa.
It’s clear the audience is familiar with his work; their muffled laughs often precede his punchlines. His creativity and imagination shine through as he constructs vivid, emotionally resonant images. For instance, violet is “mystery” – she’s the “stepmother”, whereas lilac is simply “mother.”
The show is consistent, and though it sticks to one topic, you are never bored – in fact you want to hear more. Alongside his millennial delivery, which is central to his comedic style, Torres’ performance is accentuated by subtle side-eyes and naturally sarcastic expressions that have the audience cackling. His expressions and timing provoke laughter effortlessly, without relying on physical comedy – though he does let us know that it’s something he’s perfectly capable of.
What sets Torres apart from other comedians is not necessarily his style, nor is it his ability to connect with the audience, but it is his unique approach to comedy. He is not just standing on stage telling stories and jokes; he has actually gone ahead and curated an experience. His imagination and whimsy flow throughout, which is what makes his show feel more than just a night of comedy. Torres builds a world on stage that’s both humorous and artistically rich, where comedy becomes a medium for wonder.
Rohan Joshi delivers an enjoyable and cohesive show, weaving cultural references throughout to engage and connect with his audience. While some punchlines may be lost on those unfamiliar with certain cultural contexts, as was the case for me, his stage presence more than compensates. What sets Joshi apart from many comedians is the way he commands the room; just as the audience is having a good time, so is he. His enthusiasm is magnetic and carries through the entire set.
Joshi reflects on the joys of reaching “uncle” status where he can say and do whatever he wants without consequence. Much of his set explores generational differences, delivered with playful sarcasm. At one point, he jokingly warns the younger generation in the audience that the show will run for a full hour, poking fun at what he calls the short attention span epidemic of today’s youth.
His audience is a mixed bag of ages as well as backgrounds, though his jokes about age work well in favour of both audiences; some of his punchlines where he makes cultural references may not land for all. That being said, there were times during his show where I felt left out, whenever the crowd burst into an uproar of laughter. And for those moments that don’t immediately land, they offer an invitation to look up, learn, and engage with something unfamiliar. In that way, Joshi’s comedy becomes more than entertainment; it becomes a bridge across cultural and generational divides.
Despite moments of cultural distance, Joshi builds a strong connection with the audience, laughing alongside them as he closes the show with a story about his unfortunate encounter with The Great Khali. An exclusive video clip of the incident adds a personal touch, making the evening feel all the more special. His comedy becomes a bridge across cultural and generational divides, drawing on the traditional role of stand-up as a space for shared laughter and social commentary. At the same time, it embraces new nuances rooted in self-awareness, personal storytelling and digital intimacy.
Thick and Tight, a dance theatre company led by Daniel Hay-Gordon and El Perry, dissect identity and nature in this magnificent collection of performances. It poses the question of what is so unnatural about being different and what does it mean to be natural. Complex and bold in their form, they present compelling and satirical stories through dance.
With eleven performances, each exploring different forms of life, from humans to moths to lesbian seagulls, Thick and Tight have carefully curated a balanced set of performances that tackle white heteronormative ideologies through satire as well as more serious performances. The show opens with The One Horseman of the Apocalypse, performed by Hay-Gordon and Perry. A satire mocking Donald Trump as a big orange horse with his negligence and wide contribution to climate change, as they dance around singing “Drill baby, drill!”
Ode to the Last Nightingale comes next, a more serious dance performed by Annie Edwards. This solo dance consists of different portraits of the endangered birds in the UK, portraying them through intricate movements that mirror theirs. It is emotional in its quiet moments where Annie holds still in the beaming warm spotlight. In similar tones, Baldwin’s Roomis simply magnificent in its use of staging and lights; Azara Meghie is James Baldwin from the 60s, breakdancing in the shape of crack reflected on the floor through stage lighting. Combined with audio of Baldwin himself speaking in the back, what echoes is “Everyone you are looking at is also you”, a powerful message that encapsulates what Thick and Tight is aiming to tell in their show. Our differences are what make us the same, as we are all individuals.
Before each performance, audio descriptions and context are offered, helping to understand the stories better. Some are more personal. Hay-Gordon dances so lightly and gracefully on stage with his solo piece. An intimate dance that is full of emotion, your eyes are transfixed on his every movement, following him around as he spins across the stage, watching the gold hues of light pour around his body, highlighting his form. Outstanding and breathtaking, this is a dance that will stay forever in your memory.
So what does it mean to be natural? It’s about embracing your authenticity and individuality. Thick and Tight invites you to embrace yourself and reflect on how to approach and treat nature within the tough and harsh climate we live in.
Review by Rim Alkaiat
Featured Image: Thick&Tight, Natural Behaviour, BAC, PhotoCredit-RosiePowell. Performer Annie Edwards
Natural Behaviourruns at Lowry Salfordon 10 & 11 June.
Co-commissioned by Battersea Arts Centre, Lowry, Royal Ballet & Opera, Norfolk & Norwich Festival, Corali Dance Company and Duckie.
Supported by Britten Pears Arts, BalletBoyz, Rambert School of Ballet & Contemporary Dance and One Legged Dog. Supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
Barney Norris’s adaptation of Federico García Lorca’s Blood Wedding relocates the searing Spanish tragedy to a small village in North Wiltshire, bringing its themes of fate, longing and repression into the heart of British rural life. The story’s symbolic grandeur is translated into a quiet, mounting tension, with hopes buried beneath the weight of circumstance, played out convincingly through moments of humour and subtle characterisation.
In the opening scene, we meet Georgie (Nell Williams) and Rob (Christopher Neenan) as they scout out a wedding venue. Joining them is Rob’s mother, Helen (Alix Dunmore), whose comically neurotic presence gently undercuts the couple’s optimism. Her concerns are not entirely misplaced: the run-down building, with its leaking roof and cluttered yard, becomes a physical echo of the instability beneath the surface. At the centre of Norris’s retelling lies Georgie’s attempt to ‘reset’ her life through marriage, but it is clear from early on that she is haunted by unresolved ghosts. The return of her former school friend Danni (Esme Lonsdale) is what begins to fracture the illusion. Now pregnant with her second child, Danni makes little effort to hide her confusion at Georgie’s reappearance. Their scenes together simmer with unspoken resentment, with Danni, firmly rooted in her small-town surroundings, seeing Georgie as someone who ran away and failed, while Georgie interprets Danni’s apparent contentment as resignation.
Lurking on the edges of this reunion is Lee (Kiefer Moriarty), Georgie’s former lover and now Danni’s partner. Moriarty’s performance is both haunting and compelling. From his first entrance, humming to himself while perched on a rooftop, it is clear he is deeply unsettled, yearning for something beyond his reach. He hopes to see the horizon catch fire, but instead is met with the amber glow of the village lights flickering on for another day. His longing for “one pure thing” distils one of the play’s central tensions: the quiet desperation to break free from one’s destiny defined by circumstance.
The production’s dry, naturalistic dialogue allows comedy to emerge organically from character, with Brian (David Fielder) providing some of the most memorable moments. Replacing Lorca’s original Beggar Woman, Brian is a talkative, slightly bumbling caretaker of the wedding venue. At first appearing peripheral, his deep roots in the village slowly recast him as a kind of accidental omniscient narrator, guiding the story through its darker turns with understated grace and reflecting the importance of its location.
Under Tricia Thorns’s direction, the emotional momentum builds gently but purposefully, leading not to grand tragedy, but to a final act of quiet devastation. It is a fitting conclusion to a story defined by subtlety and emotional restraint. Norris’s adaptation offers something genuinely accessible to contemporary audiences, not simply by modernising the setting, but by reworking the story’s emotional truths through a distinctly British lens. It opens up timely reflections on class, identity and the quiet power of place in shaping who we become and whether we can ever truly escape it.
Featured Image by Phil Gammon
Review by Olivia Kiakides
Blood Wedding, Barney Norris after Lorca
Omnibus Theatre, Clapham
Wednesday 30 April – Saturday 24 May
Performances Tues – Sat at 7.30pm; Sat 2.30pm; Sun 4pm
Few figures in film history provoke as much discomfort or debate as Leni Riefenstahl. A pioneering director often celebrated for her technical innovation- also remembered for the propaganda she made in the service of The Third Reich. In Riefenstahl, director Andreas Veiel does not attempt to re-open this debate or deliver a blunt verdict. Instead, he offers something far more compelling and difficult: an invitation to witness the elaborate myth Riefenstahl built around herself, told entirely in her own voice and images.
With unprecedented access to her personal archive of over 700 boxes of private recordings, letters, photographs and home videos, Veiel allows Riefenstahl to speak across time. The result is a quiet, disturbing documentary that undermines decades of self-defence and carefully constructed denials. Producer Sandra Maischberger secured access to the archive after the death of Riefenstahl’s partner Horst Kettner in 2016. What emerges from the material is not just a portrait of an artist, but of a woman obsessed with controlling how history would remember her.
The documentary opens not with her infamous propaganda work, but with scenes from The Blue Light, Riefenstahl’s 1932 debut as both director and star. Set in the mountains she idolised, the film depicts her as a mystical outsider, misunderstood and hauntingly beautiful. It is a telling starting point. By foregrounding this early, romanticised self-image, the documentary introduces a recurring theme: Riefenstahl’s lifelong desire to be remembered as an artist, not a propagandist. She returned to The Blue Light again and again throughout her life, seeing it as proof of her innocence and creative purity. Veiel uses this to set the stage for a film not just about history, but about legacy, denial and the curated myths people tell about themselves.
From there, the documentary shifts into more politically charged territory. Using newly uncovered materials from Riefenstahl’s estate, it draws a timeline through her career, her associations with the Nazi regime, and her post-war attempts to rehabilitate her image. Much of the documentary is constructed from her own voice – snippets of phone calls, interviews and recordings where she insists that she was never politically involved and knew nothing of the horrors being committed by the state that supported her work. But these claims are contrasted with footage and documentation that quietly undermine them. Whether directing footage of Hitler’s rallies or visiting occupied Poland under Nazi military escort, the evidence builds not to a confrontation, but a slow, persistent erosion of her claims of innocence.
The documentary also explores her later photographic work with the Nuba people in Sudan, a chapter of her life she tried to present as redemption. But even here, Veiel gently interrogates her role. There are strong echoes of colonial gaze and performance with her images staged, composed and controlled to be offered up for Western consumption. These sequences are contrasted with recordings of Riefenstahl being interviewed much later in her life discussing lighting, framing, and her own appearance. It becomes clear that presenting and preserving a certain self-image was paramount.
Underlying all of this is the question: can you separate an artist from their politics? Riefenstahl certainly tried. The documentary returns to her purist image in The Blue Light near the end, perhaps as a gesture of understanding what she wished would remain of her legacy. But history is not so easily rewritten. The symmetry and choreography that made her films so admired were not apolitical. They reflected and amplified the spectacle of authoritarianism. There is no denying her technical brilliance. Even Quentin Tarantino once called her the greatest director who ever lived. But Veiel refuses to let that brilliance obscure the truth. Instead, he focuses on what she tried to hide. Art may be open to interpretation, but biography, when viewed through the evidence, leaves less room for ambiguity.
Riefenstahl once said, “For something to be remembered, other things must be forgotten.” Veiel, with quiet clarity, refuses to forget. His documentary restores what she tried to erase, revealing that the most dangerous lies are often the ones told beautifully.
Keep your eyes peeled for the emerging comedian Shamik Chakrabarti. With his dry wit and delightfully awkward charm, he makes his international debut an unforgettable night.
Chakrabarti knows how to connect with his audience; he’s not just standing up on stage telling his rehearsed jokes and stories; he engages and interacts with the audience without straying away from his performance. His awkward and dry humour works well with the audience, too consumed by laughter to catch their breath. In an almost meta-type style of humour, Chakrabarti admits to making up stories and exaggerating and closing his opening act by handing out a slip of paper to the audience declaring that he’s done his local jokes and the real show can now begin.
Chakrabarti delves into life in India, humorously contrasting the ‘rules’ of driving there to that of America, quipping that in India ‘traffic lights are just colours’. He also takes a playful jab at the phenomenon of the Western sex bots – those spammy accounts lurking in the comments of Instagram Reels – comparing them to their Indian counterparts. His joke will not be revealed, as the audience has been sworn to secrecy. Chakrabarti’s versatility shines through as he seamlessly navigates a range of comedy genres: dry and dark to raunchy and witty; there is something for everyone.
What he really excels at is his masterful delivery and storytelling. He has an uncanny ability to transform a simple tale into a cinematic experience, weaving in dramatics and seamlessly sliding in jokes that keep the audience enthralled. His story about losing his laptop is definitely the highlight; he has you hooked into what he turns into a cat-and-mouse chase mystery. You really want to know how the story ends and if he eventually recovers his brand- new laptop that he left on the tuk-tuk. He creates such a hilarious reenactment of the night, putting on quite the theatrical show. He brings every character to life, from the police officers questioning him why he left his laptop on the tuk-tuk, to even the unexpected twist of solving a side mystery: cracking the password to unlock the CCTV footage. You definitely do not want this comedy mystery spoiled for anything.
Despite Appearances is a must-see – a perfect debut performance and introduction to Chakrabarti’s unique comedic style; you will want to see him again to keep up with more of his looney adventures.
Featured Image: Artist Shamik Chakrabarti, photo credit Rupak Jena
All over social media, cats are creatures of entertainment and humour, being the faces of adorable memes. But before social media, these loveable and entertaining feline characters were enjoyed through cartoons, with notable cats like Tom from Tom and Jerry and Garfield, and even before they came along, in Louis Wain’s artwork. This exhibition at The Cartoon Museum featuring illustrations and comic strips, as well as an activity table for children, guarantees a fun experience for all.
Through a small room, the exhibition is packed with a tonne of work, with each wall dedicated to an artist. As well as illustrations, there are comic strips too, encouraging visitors to read and engage with the artworks on display. The Garfield comics displayed against orange walls, is easy to spot. Upon first entrance, it seems bare, not making much for an exciting entrance, and the vibrancy of the colourful walls is slightly held back by the dim yellow lighting. The intention of the colourful walls is obvious: to add more fun and tie in the cartoon features; however, it can be quite distracting, especially with the dim lights that also take focus away from the actual work.
As you walk around, you’ll also read comments from the community at Battersea for Dogs and Cats, who have contributed to this exhibition by aiding their expertise. There is a short video clip playing on a small TV where the sound projects around the room, filmed at the cattery in Battersea.
The dedicated space for Louis Wain includes eight framed illustrations behind butter-yellow walls. The Cartoon Museum highlights Wain’s influence with cat-mania upon entrance and offers a quick biography on his career. It’s an exciting section for art lovers, as opposed to the rest of the exhibition, which focuses more on popular cartoon cats.
There is an even larger space full of the funny, psychedelic works from Ronald Searle. The composition of the framed illustrations works better here; these much larger prints aren’t all collaged so close together; instead, they run across, spaced out evenly against an off-white wall.
Searle’s depiction of cats stands out amongst the rest in this exhibition, with the curators describing them as having a “humorous, anxious and menacing air”. In his unique style, characterised by rapid, jagged lines, his cats are imbued with a more troublesome look. Compared to the other cartoon cats that have much cuter features, like round faces and big eyes, his are very pudgy with a cheeky grin.
This is indeed a fun display for any cat and cartoon lover. You are sure to walk around beaming, spotting your favourite cartoon cat as well as learning more about their history and artistry.
The towering German artist, Anselm Kiefer, has worked continuously throughout his career to interrogate the socio-political history of Germany and the political ideology of fascism. From embodying and confronting fascism when enacting the ‘Sieg Heil’ salute in one of his earliest works, Für Jean Genet (For Jean Genet), c.1969, to wearing his father’s Wehrmacht overcoat in his self-portrait, Heroic Symbols (Self Portrait), c.1970, Kiefer’s conscious inheritance of recent and traumatic historical and cultural memory is evident, alongside his commitment to looking such atrocities in the eye, and refusing to forget what so recently happened, and could indeed happen again. Alongside the attention given to the political and culturally specific, Kiefer’s works frequently focus on landscapes and nature, exploring the way in which representations of landscapes within the Romantic tradition became associated with political ideologies under the Nazi regime. Kiefer’s work interrogates the cultural past and critically examines artistic traditions tainted by the Nazi regime. This exhibition, which shows paintings, drawings, photographs, woodcuts, and artist books made between 1969 and 1982, is psychologically heavy and dense in meaning, and urgently asks questions which could not be more apt in today’s alarming political climate.
Kiefer, who is now nearly eighty and lives and works outside Paris, has chosen three recent works from his studio for the opening space of the exhibition – three large, sculptural and surface-heavy landscapes. The exhibition then progresses back in time, exploring the process and development of Kiefer’s art over the years, and charting its development to his current works, which are typically large-scale, monumental and semi-abstract. Connecting each work in Anselm Kiefer: Early Works, is a sense of the heaviness and presence of Kiefer’s materials, and the way in which such materials suggest universal themes in life, from the nature of time and transient cycles of death and renewal, to mortality and decay. Kiefer’s diverse materials are combined to form condensed surfaces where multiple materials coagulate into matted and earthy clods, symbolising the stuff of the earth and the fundamental nature of mortality.
The three landscapes in the opening room of the exhibition encapsulate the distinctively layered nature of Kiefer’s practice: there are layers of meaning, including textual references (here the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke), layers and amalgamations of materials typical of Kiefer’s work, and layers of memory, both cultural and personal. The Leaves are Falling, c.2017-23 – one of the large landscapes opening the exhibition, is made from emulsion, acrylic, oil, shellac, sediment of an electrolysis, lead and string on photography mounted on canvas, and is 126 x 250 cm. Like the work beside it, And at Night, The Heavy Earth Is Falling, 2017-23 (made of the same materials), the titles of these two works reference Austrian poet, Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem, Autumn, 1902, with a line from the poem streaking across the horizon line in a handwritten scrawl in The Leaves are Falling.
The Leaves are Falling is both immediate and tangible, with its large and sculptural leaves and its cracked and solid surface, whilst also being spacious and distant (with its faraway horizon line and a poetic feeling of sublime and endless space). The physically large size of The Leaves are Falling contributes to the sense of space, but it is also the suggestion of a heavy, moody sky, a dark horizon line and changing winds which creates an ominous mood. A sense of movement comes from the swirling murkiness of the paint-mixture in the foreground, along with the falling leaves (no doubt made sculptural with the use of shellac), which drift through the image like snow falling steadily in a snow globe: turbulence and quiet reflection; darkness and beauty; creation and destruction, these are a few of the contradictory themes in Kiefer’s works – which are always dense with meaning, yet delicate, poetic and universal. The feeling of darkness and despair is conveyed in the seemingly undefined and endless sense of space in this work – a common feature in so many of Kiefer’s large-scale works, which lack measurable parameters and instead suggest an endless abyss and an all-encompassing darkness, themes which reflect Kiefer’s response to the Holocaust and his inheritance of difficult and painful memories, both personally, politically and culturally.
Another of Rilke’s poems, Autumn Day, c.1902, has been printed alongside Autumn in the first room of the exhibition, accompanying the three recent works chosen by Kiefer. Autumn Day charts the inevitable passing of time, as defined by the seasons and the arrival of autumn, and ends with a melancholy reflection on the isolation of the hibernation months.
Autumn Day
Rainer Maria Rilke, c.1902 – ‘Autumn Day’, in The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, (trans.) Stephen Mitchell (New York, 1982), p.11.
Lord: it is time. The huge summer has gone by.
Now overlap the sundials with your shadows,
and on the meadows let the wind go free.
Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine;
grant them a few more warm and transparent days,
urge them on to fulfilment then, and press
the final sweetness into the heavy wine.
Whoever has no house now,
will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.
The combination of rich, natural beauty in Rilke’s poem, alongside stark and haunting isolation and loneliness (the manmade ‘boulevards’), combined with references to the closing in of winter and the perennial turning of the seasons, reflects the themes enmeshed in Kiefer’s works – the natural world paired with feelings of existential darkness, isolation and chaos – unsurprising themes for a German artist in the post-ward period, who has found his father’s Wehrmacht uniform in the attic at the age of 24, and is seeking to process the Nazi ideology of the Third Reich and the atrocities of the Holocaust. Writing of The Leaves are Falling and And at Night, The Heavy Earth Is Falling, curator of the exhibition, Lena Fritsch, comments that these works convey ‘an organic and natural feel’, and yet, like all of Kiefer’s work, a feeling of existential crisis pervade the paintings.
‘Anselm Kiefer, The Leaves are Falling, 2017-23. Emulsion, acrylic, oil, shellac, sediment of an electrolysis, lead and string on photography mounted on canvas, 126 x 250 cm. Collection of the artist. Author’s photo.’
The third and largest abstract landscape in the opening room is Whoever has no House now, c.2023, as quoted from Autumn Day, and is made of emulsion, acrylic, oil, shellac, lead, string and chalk on canvas, stretching an impressive 330 by 190 cm. This work is even darker in both mood and colour than the other two landscapes, and has a more destructive, charged and foreboding feel.
Whoever has no House now is forceful, dense and full of drama, whilst also, with the shine of the shellac, and the encrusted nature of the surface, being arguably ugly. In fact, many of the works in this exhibition are not attractive, and neither are they likeable, but they instead present a challenge to the viewer and an intellectual and psychological puzzle, being created from symbolic, cultural, material, textual and personal layers which require thorough unpicking in order to reveal the multiple meanings ingrained in each one.
Featured Image: The artist at work in his studio. Photo courtesy Barbara Klemm.
About the artist:
Born in Donaueschingen, southern Germany in 1945, Anselm Kiefer studied law, literature and linguistics before attending the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe, and later in Düsseldorf, during which time he had contact with Joseph Beuys. Kiefer was selected with Georg Baselitz for the West German Pavilion at the 39th Venice Biennale in 1980 and his work has since been shown in exhibitions across the globe. In 2020 Kiefer was honoured with a permanent installation of his work in the Panthéon in Paris, commissioned by President Emmanuel Macron.
Four Mothers follows Edward (James McArdle), a writer trying to juggle his upcoming career success with the responsibility of caring for his elderly mother, Alma (Fionnula Flanagan). His plans are disrupted when his friends escape their own obligations for an impromptu weekend getaway to a Pride festival in Spain, leaving their unsuspecting mothers behind, with Edward. Cooped up together, Edward must navigate the demands of this fiery quartet, struggling to find his voice while reconciling his ambitions with the weight of his obligations.
Co-writers and brothers Darren and Colin Thornton return after their 2016 dark comedy A Date for Mad Mary, which won Best Script at the Irish Film and Television Awards. Now, they reimagine Gianni Di Gregorio’s Mid-August Lunch within an Irish context, drawing from their own experiences of moving home to care for their sick mother at the time of writing. Darren recalls how he and his brother “often found ourselves in the middle of the most absurd conflicts between all these older women, as we tried, often unsuccessfully, to keep the peace.” This authentic foundation informs the script’s deft fusion of humour and heartbreak, illustrating how, in the face of family struggles, absurdity can often nourish the soul.
One of the standout aspects of Four Mothers is its remarkable casting, which delivers terrific performances from its leading ladies. Flanagan’s portrayal of Alma, a woman rendered mute after suffering a stroke, is particularly striking. This challenge mirrors the Thorntons’ own experience of watching their mother struggle with the loss of her voice. Stripped of this essential layer of humanity, Alma communicates via an electronic device. Through a combination of sardonic expressions and physicality, Flanagan masterfully conveys Alma’s frustration and wit, underscoring the absurdity of the situation. Bossing her son around or gossiping about someone within earshot via the voice device is hilarious, yet always done with tenderness. The film’s ability to intertwine moments of humour with emotional depth keeps the audience fully engaged, shifting effortlessly between laughter and heartfelt reflection, just as life does.
Each actress portrays a fully developed and convincing character—no easy feat in a film that runs just shy of ninety minutes. The women, while dependent on Edward’s care, are also fiercely independent, with their own histories and desires emerging in a whirlwind of hilarious and sometimes combative moments. Forced into close quarters, the four women—Jean (Dearbhla Molloy), Maude (Stella McCusker), Rosey (Paddy Glynn), and Alma—begin to recognise their shared experiences, including the loss of husbands and the acceptance of their queer sons. A particularly powerful scene takes place in a minivan, where they share packed lunches and open up to one another about their sons coming out. In this simple setting, the women’s stories unfold, offering a quiet but profound exploration of queer narratives from an older generation of Irish traditionalism. What begins as an uncomfortable gathering gradually transforms into a celebration of a newfound sisterhood, which is beautiful to witness, especially for women in the later stages of their lives.
McArdle’s emotive performance as the story’s protagonist firmly anchors the narrative while allowing his female counterparts to shine through. He boasts an effortlessly delightful rapport with the mothers, naturally engaging with their cheeky banter and equally support their tender moments. This quality falters, however, when Edward must sell himself in promotional work for his novel. Crippled with anxiety, he is either a muddle of words or left speechless. McArdle’s nuanced portrayal ensures that Edward never becomes a pitiable figure; he’s not an object of sympathy but a real person, grappling with the tension between caring for others and striving to move forward in his own life.
Four Mothers is an exploration of family, identity, and community, deftly blending absurdity with emotional depth. At its heart, the film reveals how life’s challenges and unexpected connections can lead to profound self-discovery and the quiet strength found in the bonds we form.
How can God create a perfect world when he himself is fraught with the same flaws, vices and uncertainties as his postlapsarian creations? ‘Paradise Lost (lies unopened beside me)’ dismantles the spiritual plane and reframes it through the banalities of domestic life in Ben Duke’s searing reconceptualisation of Milton’s epic.
Returning to Battersea Arts Centre ten years after its premiere, with Olivier-nominated Sharif Afifi taking over from Duke, its creator, this one man show defies its singular form.
Simultaneously embodying God, Lucifer, Adam, Eve, a frustrated father and a dance choreographer, Afifi renders the absence of a larger cast imperceptible. Despite the bare stage, he convincingly conjures up Heaven, Hell, Eden and Earth, demonstrating a remarkable ability to evoke layered realities with minimal props.
What initially seems like it will be 75 minutes of overblown farce begins with Afifi descending a rope to Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra, the instantly recognisable yet now somewhat clichéd refrain from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Amidst a few other awkward moments, Afifi cleverly ensnares the audience with humour, using it to get them onside for the heretical re-imaginings of Milton that follows.
Afifi as God creates Heaven through a sweaty and visceral dance, marked by shaky, uncertain movements and a crippled stature as he struggles under the weight of responsibility. His faltering gestures express a recognisable human doubt in his creativity, in a noticeable contrast to the ease and nonchalance often awarded to God in typical portrayals of the Creation story. This self-doubt resurfaces in a meta-theatrical moment when Afifi, now assuming the role of the choreographer, grapples with designing a dance so perfect that it represents Heaven.
Acknowledging its own limitations as a piece written by a white man about a singular male figure representing all of humanity, the piece attempts to be subversive within the confines of its tools. By reimagining a scene in Heaven through the lens of a modern club – perhaps the famed Heaven – it depicts God flirting with Lucifer, subtly presenting their relationship through a queer paradigm. Later, Lucifer and God argue about having children, framed through modern tensions present in progressive relationships around career sacrifice, which culminates in God falling pregnant, suggesting that God is in fact, a woman.
With a frenzied scene depicting Lucifer fall, and a full-blown war in Heaven, Afifi orchestrates the most dramatic battles through the smallest of movements – an impressive feat in a one man show. Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven, Milton sardonically postulates, a sentiment that feels more astute than ever in these turbulent times.
Staring at the ruins of this celestial failure, Nick Cave’s velvety line ‘I don’t believe in an interventionist God’ fills the room, eliciting giggles from the audience as Afifi begins to assemble Adam, drawing parallels to Frankenstein and his monster. Stripping out of his suit into a tight beige spandex with a Velcro vine leaf, Afifi becomes a rather comical embodiment of Adam, prancing around the stage, giddy in his newfound freedom.
Fast-forwarding to Adam and Eve, now living together in a flat after meeting at dance school, the piece repeatedly draws the divine back to the domestic. Restless with comfortable life, Eve wanders into her garden, where a comically feeble sock-puppet snake tempts her with the tree of knowledge. Adam, not deceived, though fondly overcome with female charm follows suit and together they fall. Played entirely by Afifi, this deftly executed scene is charged with tension as he shifts elastically between characters. God watches his human creations succumb to temptation and ultimately confronted by his own fallibility.
Leading us through what begins as a light-hearted, humorous tale, Afifi gradually confronts us with flawed masculinity and the inadequacies of the human condition. In a striking closing monologue, he stands beneath a relentless tirade of water, drenched to the skin, as he condenses the entire history of human sin into a spinning carousel of prelapsarian fallibility—Cain and Abel, plagues, pestilence, endless noise and corruption.
Afifi is a true wonder – entirely compelling – while Duke’s script, though occasionally contrived, masterfully distils Milton’s epic into a piece that is bold, resonant and unexpectedly sublime.
Featured Image: Lost Dog in Paradise Lost starring Sharif Afifi, photo by Zoe Manders
Ben Duke performed the show for the first time in 2015 at Battersea Arts Centre and over the next few years, performed it all over the UK to the delight of audiences and critics, winning a clutch of awards along the way. Fast forward ten years and actor Sharif Afifi has taken over from Ben as the star of this new production.
Battersea Arts Centre (BAC) has a long history of working with Lost Dog. Originally co-commissioned by BAC in 2015, Paradise Lost (lies unopened beside me) premiered at the South London venue, with its success leading to a second BAC co-commission, Juliet and Romeo in 2018. Both productions responded well leading to successful international tours. This homecoming performance exemplifies a longstanding partnership and BAC’s commitment to artist development.
Sharif Afifi’s theatre credits includeThe Band’s Visit (Donmar Warehouse) which earned him the 2023 Olivier Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a Musical, My Fair Lady (London Coliseum 2022) and Hadestown (National Theatre 2018).
