★★★★

“A unique and refreshing angle on the role of movement in theatre”

I first saw the work of the Italian company Teatro dei Gordi at the Coronet Theatre two years ago and I knew right away that this is an extraordinary team of creatives that have a lot to offer to the world of physical theatre and theatre in general. After watching Pandora, I was certain that my first instinct couldn’t have be more accurate. Using a public toilet as a backdrop, they bring to us a set of stories comprised of movement, music, collaboration, multirolling and masks.

With physicality as the main device, the narratives that unfold onstage express everything and anything that life can be: funny, tragic, absurd, scary, wholesome. The circumstances get more and more ridiculous, but a beautiful connection of familiarity is built with the audience. We start off with a germaphobe who struggles to navigate the inevitable nastiness of a public toilet. Characters come and go, some chirpy, some rushing, some trying to fix their problems and some helping out others. One minute you see a trainee chef whose dreams literally go down the toilet, the next an incredibly graceful stilt walker waltzes in. It’s a fascinating frenzy of the unexpected.

The company consists of six performers, Claudia Caldarano, Cecilia Campani, Giovanni Longhin, Andrea Panigatti, Sandro Pivotti and Mateo Vitanza. All of them involved in the creation of Pandora and all of them bringing to the table a distinctive set of skills and unique comedic manners. They work together under the direction of Riccardo Pippa, enhancing the natural physicality we see and perform every day ourselves, without the necessity of overly elaborate stunts or tricks.

There isn’t a continuous plot, but a set of individual stories that sort of merge into one another with different characters commanding the stage. The individual stories are intriguing, saying a lot in a short period of time and with minimal, or none at all, use of language. However, it’d be more fascinating to see a potential connection, or a constant, to bring them together, like in the company’s previous show, Sulla Morte Senza Esagerare. Still, the first story returns in the end, providing a hilarious closing to a wonderful and uplifting piece of performance.

The set, designed by Anna Maddalena Cingi, is a realistic and very detailed public bathroom, where every piece of toilet paper, sink, urinal and stall is used in a manner of genius resourcefulness. In the beginning of the show, everything is neat and clean and by the end, the human touch has created a vibrant space of mayhem.

The colourfully lit background gives an artistic and playful touch to the stage, while also providing a sense of time passing and tone changing. The actors are mostly lit with realistic tones, which contrast, light design by Paolo Casati, works perfectly, as it creates an element of realism amongst the absurdity of the stories.

Pandora is a masterclass on physical theatre, a unique and refreshing angle on the role of movement in theatre. Pandora’s box has been opened and will keep drawing us in to see what else the Italian company have to mesmerise us with.

BIRDSONG

Alexandra Palace Theatre

★★

“The play is a streamlined version of the book, but this production does not bring out the pain and inhumanity of war”

Alexandra Palace Theatre is the final venue for Birdsong, after its long regional UK tour.

Alexandra Palace Theatre is London’s oldest new theatre, originally built in 1875, falling into disrepair and eventually re-opening in 2018 after a major refurbishment bringing the huge auditorium back to life in arrested decay. It is a big theatre to fill and with a lot of the seating on the flat it is lucky the stage is high. The slopping seats are a long way back from the stage in this vast space. But it is beautiful and majestic.

Now to Birdsong… This production marks the thirtieth anniversary of Sebastian Faulks’s epic and searing WWI novel – and fifteen years since the West End premiere of the stage adaptation by Rachel Wagstaff.

After seven months on the road, this current production is tired and needs to be put to sleep. The cast, most playing several characters with several dodgy accents, have been allowed to stretch out their lines and pauses – it needed desperate tightening by the director Alastair Whatley, and at over three hours this production is too long.

The opening scene is in present day Amiens, France, with a young man looking for a WWI soldier’s grave. It then moves to the bourgeois charm of pre-war Amiens where Stephen Wraysford (James Esler) is a guest staying with René Azaire (Sargon Yelda), his wife Isabelle (Charlie Russell) and his teenage daughter Lisette (Gracie Follows) to learn about Azaire’s textile factory. The factory is failing, the workers are rebelling, the Azaire’s marriage is toxic, and Stephen starts a passionate affair with the unhappy Isabelle. The affair is discovered and Act One closes with them running away together.

Act Two opens in the 1916 trenches in France, with hammy acting and singing Hold Your Hand Out Naughty Boy, a music hall favourite, sung by the sappers and infantrymen of the British Army, covered in mud and showing their camaraderie. We meet various characters including Jack Firebrace (Max Bowden) a sapper who digs the dangerous tunnels under the battlefields, and learns of his young son John’s death, in a letter from home. Stephen is now a lonely, cold-hearted lieutenant, who dissects dead rats. In flash backs we discover that Isabelle had left him. Firebrace saves Stephen’s life when one of the tunnels collapses in an explosion. The act ends in silhouette as the soldiers climb up the ladders out of the trenches into No Man’s Land and certain death.

Act Three in the tail end of the war, Stephen and Firebrace are again trapped underground. This time Stephen desperately tries to save Firebrace’s life, but he dies before a German Jewish soldier breaks through – it is the end of the war and peace is above ground. The play bookends back to the present day and we discover that the young man searching for the soldier’s grave has been looking for Jack Firebrace’s grave; and he is in fact John (yes named after Jack’s dead son), Stephen’s grandson.

The set by Richard Kent, works well to create multiple locations including the claustrophobic underground tunnels. The lighting tonight was maybe too dark and there was continuous smoke billowing, which worked for the factory and battle scenes but not for the gentle French countryside and house scenes.

The theatre acoustics are flat, meaning the cast are heavily miked with individual head mikes and the sound is overly loud. The microphones also pick up the fact that the maid’s shoes do not have rubbered soles, and on this stage her noisy clackety clack steps were heard throughout, especially when she exited stage left and ran round backstage to make a quick re-entrance stage right.

There was no chemistry between lovers Isabelle and Stephen, and in their graphic sex scene Stephen is naked, as any ardent lover should be. However, I was left wondering where his mike pack might be hidden.

Birdsong ends with the sounds of the soaring titular birdsong.

The play is a streamlined version of the book, but this production does not bring out the pain and inhumanity of war, or dying and surviving in a living hell, nor the horrific psychological effects of war.

PANDORA

The Coronet Theatre

★★★★

“A unique and refreshing angle on the role of movement in theatre”

PANDORA

The Coronet Theatre

Reviewed on 28th February 2025

by Stephanie Christodoulidou

Photography by Noemi Ardesi

Previously reviewed at this venue:

PANDORA

PANDORA

PANDORA

BIRDSONG

Alexandra Palace Theatre

★★

“The play is a streamlined version of the book, but this production does not bring out the pain and inhumanity of war”

BIRDSONG

Alexandra Palace Theatre

Reviewed on 28th February 2025

by Debbie Rich

Photography by Pamela Raith

Previously reviewed at this venue:

BIRDSONG

BIRDSONG

BIRDSONG