LAY DOWN YOUR BURDENS at the Barbican

★★★

“It was a genuinely mixed experience, and sometimes that is refreshing in its own way.”

Billed as a piece of ‘radically tender dance theatre’ Lay Down Your Burdens is a brave, if peculiar, piece of immersive theatre.

We are welcomed to a local pub, by friendly landlady (Sara Turner) where the three locals and the bartender consistently mask their respective pain by drinking, and dancing, and generally being merry. When they are joined by an American stranger (Donald Hutera) who is ripped open and vulnerable with grief, they begin to teach him a new way of looking at life. Interspersed with audience participation, immersive games and calls and responses, as well as stunning contemporary dance, this story unfolds as each character delves into their personal unhappiness.

Choreographer/director Rhiannon Faith devised this piece with the cast, and it has that muddled feeling that often plagues devised theatre. There is a lot going on, far too many characters, and the script is at times almost painful. However, where this piece soars is when it stays away from the strange plot that ties it down, and focusses on the abstract, on the audience participation and the dance.

Something that works astonishingly well is the sound design by Anna Clock. Anna is on stage paying cello, along with violinist India Shan Merrett, giving an ethereal live beauty to the performance. But Anna is also recording the audience responses, and at the end they layer them into a melting soundscape, adding meaning to the words and chants we’d shared. My favourite moment in the piece was where audience members were invited to share into a microphone the things they loved. It was moving and subtle and completely beautiful. To hear these back, layered with people’s responses to other prompts throughout the piece, was a stroke of immersive genius.

The dance was also extraordinary. Dominic Coffey, Shelley Eva Haden, Sam Ford and Finetta Sidgwick move across the stage in frantic, weird contortions. They represent pain, grief and struggle through their bodies but it is also lovely to see them dancing a jig in an early scene. All of them are very strong dancers, with captivating stage presences, but a standout is Haden who tells the story of a woman losing touch with her inner child through a beautiful series of gyrating agitated solos.

The set, by designer Noemi Daboczi is simple, a bar at the centre and booths behind, but it can be whatever the performers make it, and it feels eerily like a local pub.

This piece is hard to review, because some parts I hated, and some I loved. Every time I would get on board with the production, it would completely change into something else, often something that was baffling or tonally startling. I would see another production by Rhiannon Faith Company, but I cannot wholeheartedly recommend this one. I found the message confusing, and even at times problematic – there was a sense of toxic positivity and no questions around alcohol as a ticket to happiness. However, the idea of finding the joy in small things is beautiful, and important. It was a genuinely mixed experience, and sometimes that is refreshing in its own way.

Lay Down Your Burdens

★★★

Barbican

LAY DOWN YOUR BURDENS at the Barbican

★★★

“It was a genuinely mixed experience, and sometimes that is refreshing in its own way.”