“the unfaltering energy and enthusiasm displayed by these performers was incredible”
The rich and complex nostalgia evoked by Ugly Bucket Theatre’s Bost-Uni Plues is something truly original and remarkable. This production captures the overwhelming emptiness that can be felt after leaving university, interrogating and challenging the notion that getting your degree is “the best three years of your life.” Told through voiceover from interviews with real students about their personal experiences of university, Bost-Uni Plues engages its audience with high energy physical theatre as it explores unspoken mental health issues that face many graduates today.
The play follows three clowns, played with humour and humanity by Angelina Cliff, Canice Ward and Grace Gallagher; we see the clowns in their first awkward meeting in halls, we see them take drugs in Freshers’ week, watching their whirlwind journey up until graduation, when they are thrust into the abyss of reality, away from the comforts that once defined their existence. The performers are denied a voice, allowing their expressions and movements to tell their story – the unfaltering energy and enthusiasm displayed by these performers was incredible, and their performances were laced with real comedy and emotion whilst also feeling very individual. As the play went on, we begin to see past the clown and the past the mime to see the complex human beneath.
The direction from Grace Gallagher, who won Best Director at the 2018 Liverpool Fringe, feels genius and unique in a landscape of naturalist, and realist, theatre; the black box stage never once felt empty as the performers were able to fill the space with their larger than life presence. The play deals with a subject that young people find difficult to talk about – those post-uni blues – and this is why it’s so special and no doubt why it won Best Production at Liverpool Fringe 2018. University can be an amazing time for many people, but this show evinces the need to talk about that odd sense of loss once it’s all over; the confusion of where to turn, the relentless rejection, the disappearance of friends. Though perhaps the show doesn’t go as far as to offer us the answers to solve all these issues, it goes a long way in opening up the conversation.
There’s a real concern that theatre is less and less appealing to the youth of today, and Bost-Uni Plues gives us a solution to this problem; tell stories that are accessible, tell stories that are relevant and tell stories that matter- stories that have the power, in their own, small way, to change lives.
“Movement is contorted and manic, but also clever, imaginative, and precise”
Since its publication in 1865, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland has been adapted dozens of times. While the adult themes of the children’s book are widely acknowledged, Joelene English’s modern dance piece, Alice: The Lost Chapter, delves into the darker side of the story. She explores Alice’s troubled subconscious and subverts other familiar characters, presenting us with a straight-jacketed Mad Hatter, a pained, grimacing Cheshire cat and an anxious, tense White Rabbit.
English’s production combines dance, physical theatre and film, to create an unflinchingly dark and atmospheric piece. Alison Ashton’s gorgeous set, reminiscent of a Tim Burton or Guillermo del Toro film, sets the nightmarish tone perfectly. Mismatched wooden furniture, a closet with a staircase of drawers, a cobweb-shrouded picture frame, an eerie dressing table and a writing desk containing different sized doors become a dark and whimsical playground for the disturbed characters. The stunning video projections complete the effect, making the atmosphere of the piece utterly engrossing.
English’s choreography draws on contemporary experimental physical theatre rather than traditional dance. It is aggressively and persistently confrontational and uncomfortable for its audience. Movement is contorted and manic, but also clever, imaginative, and precise, while the decidedly unmusical soundscape is jarring and strange.
Alicia Meehan’s Alice hovers between the wide-eyed curiosity we associate with the character and a more unsettling, obsessive watchfulness. English has given her some gorgeously haunting choreography – we often see her in the background dangling in a closet or precariously perched on set pieces. The other characters frantically guide Alice through this ‘wonderland’, scuttling or twitching their way around the stage.
The overarching effect of the piece is that of a disjointed and hypnotic dream. Several moments, however, stand out. The Mad Hatter’s tea party is fiercely anxious. The four characters scramble desperately around the table before freezing in contorted positions then melting away. In the opening sequence Alice is seated as the Red Queen stands behind her doing her hair. What begins as a slightly uncomfortable maternal scene, quickly evolves into a display of desperate obsession and control. The queen then disappears for the remainder of the piece. In Meehan’s final haunting solo, she dances with a bright red dress, reminding us of the Queen’s absence and creating an agonising sense of loneliness and longing.
English’s Alice is ultimately a harrowing, challenging commentary on mental health. Carroll’s world makes for the perfect, twisted backdrop upon which the subconscious mind can come to life through movement. As with any excellent piece of theatre, Alice forces its audience to confront itself. It is simultaneously beautiful and grotesque, captivating and deeply painful. The mesmerising piece is gripping from start to finish and will be hard to shake from the memory.
