Tag Archives: Addison Waite

Sticky Door

★★★★

VAULT Festival 2020

ReviewsAddison Waite, Andrew Hollingworth, Anna Kezia Williams, Beccy D’Souza, Bicycles and Fish, Ellen Havard, Katie Arnstein, Lidia Crisafulli, Rachel Sampley, VAULT Festival 2020thespyinthestalls

Sticky Door

Cage – The Vaults

Reviewed – 12th February 2020

★★★★

“If good art holds a mirror up to nature, then Sticky Door provides a remarkably clear reflection”

Katie Arnstein is on a roll, coming into 2020 off the back of two successful solo shows: her 2018 Bicycles and Fish, and 2019 follow-up Sexy Lamp. Arnstein’s latest piece, Sticky Door, completes the feminist trilogy. You can catch all three shows at VAULT Festival this week.

The title Sticky Door refers to a quote by Minouche Shafik, former Deputy Governor of the Bank of England. Shafik argued that systemic sexism is not like a glass ceiling, which when shattered leaves the way free and clear for other women to follow. Sexism is more like a sticky door: it helps to have someone pulling from the other side, and once pried open, sticks shut again.

Arnstein’s performance combines storytelling and original songs she accompanies with the ukulele. Like her previous shows, this one draws heavily from personal experience. Arnstein takes us back to 2014: the year she had an epiphany that she’d been a passive participant in all of her relationships, and decided to correct for it by embarking on a year of casual sex, which she would initiate.

In a smartly written, very funny monologue, Arstein shares her stories of sex, sexism, cystitis, and the worst flat in London. In her breathless narration – she packs a lot of words into sixty minutes – the jokes fly fast. Her love of language is evident, and much of the comedy comes from incredibly clever similes. Puns also crop up repeatedly. Considering the heavy subject matter, including discussion of depression and assault, Arnstein’s approach is fresh and entertaining. And while her bubbly lightness is undeniably engaging, she shows notable skill in her ability switch gears, reign in the levity, and allow the serious moments to be serious.

If good art holds a mirror up to nature, then Sticky Door provides a remarkably clear reflection. Many will see pieces of their own experiences in Arnstein’s stories. Although Sexy Lamp may feel like a more directed, cohesive show, Sticky Door cuts deep with its argument that society grooms girls to tolerate harassment and abuse: to direct their anger inwardly, and translate it to guilt and shame, as opposed to outwardly, at the perpetrators and a society that caters to them. With moving conviction, Arnstein calls for women to believe they deserve better, and to find the courage not to accept less.

Arnstein offers up her own encounters with misogyny for dissection with intelligence and insight. Her shows are a gift to the women in the audience in particular, who will undoubtably leave feeling less alone.

Reviewed by Addison Waite

Photography by Lidia Crisafulli

Click here to see all our reviews from VAULT Festival 2020

Lost Laowais

★★★

VAULT Festival 2020

ReviewsAddison Waite, David East, Eschaton Theatre, Joseph Wilkins, Julian East, Liam Mercer, Lost Laowais, Network Theatre, Siu-See Hung, The Vaults, Tian Brown-Sampson, VAULT Festival 2020, Waylon Luke Mathespyinthestalls

Lost Laowais

Network Theatre

Reviewed – 5th February 2020

★★★

“brimming with ideas that don’t feel as though they’ve fully come together”

There’s been much discussion lately around the contradiction of Brexiteers who, fed up with foreigners in the UK, are also indignant at the suggestion Brexit may impact their ability to live abroad. This largely unexamined difference between ‘immigrants’ and ‘expats’ is at the heart of David East’s Lost Laowais.

Directed by Tian Brown-Sampson, the play follows the intertwining lives of four expats in Beijing. Julian (East) has a Cambridge degree in Oriental Studies, and is finding it difficult to admit his love of China is unrequited. Lisa (Siu-See Hung) is a British woman of Chinese heritage. She doesn’t speak Chinese, and is quickly finding the country unwelcoming to those who don’t. Robert (Joseph Wilkins), a celebrated British writer who has lived in China for more than twenty years, has learned the many reasons it can never be a real home for foreigners. Ollie (Waylon Luke Ma) is the teenage son of a diplomat, who relocates with his family every few years. All four of them are outsiders. All four of them are lonely.

Lost Laowais brings forward timely ideas about belonging and multicultural identities, but misses the mark with an uneven script and some unpolished staging. Although East faithfully portrays a pretentious Oxbridge expat, the dialogue often feels stilted. The characters’ interactions could do with smoothing. Choppy scenes broken by slightly clumsy transitions, shuffling chairs and tables in the dark, are not aided by awkward sound cues (Liam Mercer) – whether ambient noise or music – which cut off partway through both the scenes and transitions.

There’s groundwork for some intriguing material about expats as voluntary exiles, but the script doesn’t quite manage to make us care about Julian and Robert as much as we need to. The play is strongest when it focuses on Lisa’s perspective. The granddaughter of Chinese immigrants, she snaps at Julian when he suggests he’s an immigrant too. She reminds him he makes more money than his Chinese colleagues, and that he moved to Beijing because he was bored, not out of desperation for a better life. Lisa’s experience of being caught between two cultures, and feeling cut off from the country of her heritage by language especially, is more compelling than the somewhat predictable romantic storyline she’s given.

In the days following Brexit, it’s a good moment to take a hard look at British expats. This is a show brimming with ideas that don’t feel as though they’ve fully come together.

Reviewed by Addison Waite

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