DIMANCHE

Peacock Theatre

★★★★

“the overall effect is to seduce us with a series of visuals that pack surprising punch, for all their whimsy”

The Belgian companies Focus and Chaliwaté have brought a co-production to the Peacock Theatre as part of 2025 Mime London. Their show Dimanche is a charming and whimsical piece of visual theatre, featuring puppets, humans, and sets that are both miniaturized and full size. The locations are as varied as an arctic landscape, a desert island complete with tsunami, and the house of an ordinary couple (with grandma) trying to adapt to climate change. This is a show for all ages. Children in particular will appreciate the cute animals which range from polar bears, sharks and flamingoes.

Dimanche arrives in London under the umbrella of Mime London, which specializes in finding companies whose work is hard to categorize. Curators Helen Lannaghan and Joseph Seelig have teamed up to take the place of the London International Mime Festival, which closed in 2023. Mime London is smaller scale than the LIMF, but still adept at bringing intriguing work to brighten a dark and post holiday January. With well equipped theatres such as the Barbican and Peacock hosting the festival, it’s a chance for West End audiences to see work that is usually performed abroad.

The work of Compagnie Focus and Chaliwaté in particular resists easy definition. Dimanche features three performers who take on a variety of roles in a series of wide ranging locations. They work as actors, as puppeteers, and even turn into the locations themselves from time to time. The show opens in the arctic. We watch an intrepid film crew document the effects of climate change. Our parka clad team attempt everything from driving in a blizzard to crossing unstable ice. Sometimes the scenes are miniaturized, in which case the body of one performer becomes the snowy landscape. Tiny cars drive over the curves and precipitous bends, headlights blazing through the darkness. When the ice gives way, and the audience finds itself plunged underwater, a video projected onto a screen takes over the action. For most companies, this would be sufficient challenge. But this team is just getting warmed up. From arctic exteriors the audience is transported to a domestic interior where rising temperatures outside make even the most mundane of household tasks fraught with risk. From malfunctioning electrics to melting furniture, we see Grandma and her family attempt everyday activities as though the heat were completely normal. Only when the wind and the rain literally carry the family away do we realize that the joke’s on us. This is what climate change looks like.

Compagnie Focus and Chaliwaté manage to pack in an impressive number of climate change vignettes in just over an hour. They present their theme with humour and a lightness of touch that belies the seriousness of the subject. If there’s one criticism, it is that there’s no overarching narrative, which makes it challenging to tune immediately into each scene change. At other times, the scenery (and the show) seems a bit lost on the large stage of the Peacock Theatre. But the overall effect is to seduce us with a series of visuals that pack surprising punch, for all their whimsy. The ice is melting, polar bears are being stranded on icebergs, and further south, people are struggling with hotter weather, more violent storms, and seas that threaten everything on land. Dimanche makes its point while beguiling us with cute baby polar bears stranded on icebergs, and flapping flamingos caught in destructive winds.

Dimanche is a delightful show that teaches with its entertainment. Kudos to Mime London for making Compagnie Focus and Chaliwaté part of the 2025 line up. See this show if you can. It won’t be in London long!

DIMANCHE

Peacock Theatre

Reviewed on 30th January 2025

by Dominica Plummer

Photography by Mihaela Bodlovic

Previously reviewed at Sadler’s Wells venues:

SONGS OF THE WAYFARER | ★★★★ | December 2024

NOBODADDY (TRÍD AN BPOLL GAN BUN) | ★★★★ | November 2024

THE SNOWMAN | ★★★★ | November 2024

EXIT ABOVE | ★★★★ | November 2024

ΑΓΡΙΜΙ (FAUVE) | ★★★ | October 2024

STORIES – THE TAP DANCE SENSATION | ★★★★★ | October 2024

FRONTIERS: CHOREOGRAPHERS OF CANADA | ★★★★ | October 2024

TUTU | ★★★ | October 2024

CARMEN | ★★★★ | July 2024

THE OPERA LOCOS | ★★★★ | May 2024

ASSEMBLY HALL | ★★★★★ | March 2024

AUTOBIOGRAPHY (v95 and v96) | ★★★ | March 2024

DIMANCHE

★★★★

“Tragedy and farce link arms and are not afraid to share the same lines of dialogue.”

Although Alan Bleasdale wrote the original series of television plays before Margaret Thatcher came to power, it wasn’t first broadcast until 1982 and was consequently seen to be a specific critique of the Thatcher era. His writing, though, had a far more wide-ranging effect that guaranteed the success of the stories. The nostalgic and gritty realism still holds power nearly half a century later, as evidenced by James Graham’s stirring adaptation for the stage, currently on a nationwide tour.

The early nineteen-eighties were different things for different people. At one end of the scale there were the rich and ambitious, riding on progress and the jetstream of new money. But while Harry Enfield parodied this selfishness of the yuppie culture (we all remember the ‘Loadsamoney’ character?), Bleasdale was focusing on the underside; the high unemployment and collapse of the primary industries. “Boys form the Blackstuff” follows five working class men trying to keep afloat amid this recession, not helped by the suspicious and bullying hand of the Department of Employment.

Amy Jane Cook’s brutalist and severe set evokes the Liverpool docklands with its iron frameworks which close in on the more intimate scenes, lending an air of claustrophobia to the domestic bickering that runs parallel to the collective fight for survival that these characters are up against. Kate Wasserberg’s stylish direction weaves the short scenes together into a series of choreographed vignettes that flow, then clash like freshwater rapids coming up against the murkiness and remorselessness of the Mersey.

We get to know the principal characters early on (if we don’t know them already). Chrissie, Loggo, Yosser, George, Dixie and Snowy. Even if you are unfamiliar with the original, and once you’ve acclimatised to the authentic Liverpudlian accent, their stories are easy to follow. The performances of each cast member are strikingly individual and recognisable. Obviously, Jay Johnson’s ‘Yosser’ stands out from the crowd with his peppered catchphrases (‘gizza job’ and ‘I could do that’) and jittery, unpredictable energy. We realise that this could be a play about mental health – a sudden understanding that whisks the narrative into the present day but without the unease of having to tread carefully through contemporary fragility. Words of wisdom, particularly from Ged McKenna’s wonderfully uneducated yet perfectly erudite ‘George’, are never lost in the humour. We laugh through this show just as much as we gasp at the personal hardships endured.

The pace picks up in the second act, even as the scenes get longer and more introspective. The humour and pathos join forces in monologue. Tragedy and farce link arms and are not afraid to share the same lines of dialogue. A funeral scene, as poignant as they come, bleeds brilliantly into the comedy of a dole queue. An anguished wife (a superb Sian Polhill-Thomas) wondering how to feed her children is, in the next scene, an acerbically grim clerk at the jobcentre. But under the lights, each character casts shadow of hope. Even if the shades aren’t subtle, it is the contrast of light and dark that bring this show alive.

We might not have admitted this in the eighties, but these ‘boys’ feel emasculated, fragile and desperate for hope. The writing is sensitive beyond its years, and in Graham’s revival we can carouse in the period without having to make excuses for it. Despite being geographically and culturally specific, it is universal. And despite being rooted in a particular decade, it is timeless. The stories of ordinary people, told in an extraordinary production.

DIMANCHE

Peacock Theatre

★★★★

“the overall effect is to seduce us with a series of visuals that pack surprising punch, for all their whimsy”

DIMANCHE

Peacock Theatre

Reviewed on 30th January 2025

by Dominica Plummer

Photography by Mihaela Bodlovic

Previously reviewed at Sadler’s Wells venues:

DIMANCHE

DIMANCHE

DIMANCHE

BOYS FROM THE BLACKSTUFF

Theatre Royal Windsor

★★★★

“Tragedy and farce link arms and are not afraid to share the same lines of dialogue.”

BOYS FROM THE BLACKSTUFF

Theatre Royal Windsor then UK Tour continues

Reviewed on 29th January 2025

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Alistair Muir

Previously reviewed at this venue:

BOYS FROM THE BLACKSTUFF

BOYS FROM THE BLACKSTUFF

BOYS FROM THE BLACKSTUFF