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Review of The Break-Up Monologues – 3 Stars

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Break up monologues

The Break-Up Monologues

Blue Elephant Theatre

Reviewed – 19th July 2017

 

⭐️⭐️⭐️

 

 

“Saucy, insightful and fun”

 

 

The Break-up Monologues was a comedy, storytelling and spoken word night that looked at three artist’s best and worst relationship break-up stories. Rosie Wilby an award-winning comedian devised and curated this themed night. Unfortunately, Rosie who was meant to host the show had taken ill – the joys of live performance.

For Rosie, the idea behind the Break-up Monologues began when she was doing a touring piece in which she spoke about her own break-up and afterwards at her gigs, she would get people to tell her their own craziest break-up stories, at least this is what we were told at the beginning of the night.

Due to this set-up, I was expecting for the evening to be filled with whacky break-up stories that were ‘hilarious’ but was instead catfished. It wasn’t that the stories told were awful or boring, but they just didn’t live up to the expectation built by the way they were introduced.

Paula Varjack, opening the show, brought the saucy, young and sexually explorative tone. Her writing was really engaging and at times really personal. Through her piece, I felt she shared with us a part of herself and strangely out of the three artists I felt as though I got to know Paula more.

However, whilst Paula’s writing was beautiful and personal, her delivery and performativity left much to be desired. The comedic parts sometimes lacked timing or emphasis and even the tone of the delivery was occasionally off. This did hinder our connection with the artist.

Sophia Blackwell, on the other hand, was phenomenal. She was my favourite out of the three artists. Sophia had a really engaging way of speaking to the audience that felt honest and her writing was really something special. Bringing spoken word amongst her storytelling she really delivered an interesting and poetically beautiful tone to this night.

The feminist in me was stoked to hear female voices openly speaking about break-ups, sex, and sexuality in a way we don’t often hear on stage, TV or popular media. These artists also gave bi-sexuality a visibility that is much needed.

VG Lee as the closing act gave us the perspective from an older woman’s eyes. For me, she brought that old age wisdom and lesbian feminist twist to her act. She was a very sweet lady and the things she voiced that evening really resonated with me. As a young LGBT person I haven’t had the pleasure of hearing or seeing older LGBT performers on stage sharing their experiences and so this was for me something really special.

The evening was simple and whizzed through leaving me wanting to hear more stories, more spoken word, more bisexual voices, more lesbian stories and more heartbreaks. Saucy, insightful and fun.

Reviewed by Daniel Correia

Blue Elephant

 

THE BREAK-UP MONOLOGUES

was at The Blue Elephant Theatre

 

 

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An Evening with Giulia

 An Evening with Giulia

Blue Elephant Theatre

Reviewed – 13th July 2017

 

⭐️⭐️⭐️

 

 

“Incredibly beautiful to watch”

 

 

The seven dancers who comprise Giulia Iurza’s company J7S walk into the unadorned space in the dark to begin the first piece, Shikishin Funi (the title taken from Buddhist terminology, and referring to the oneness of mind and body). The Blue Elephant is an intimate venue, which means we can hear their feet on the floor. This, it turns out, is the perfect introduction to Giulia and the company’s work, which brings the spirituality of human connection into focus.

It is movement with intensity, and we can see and feel the physical and emotional transactions that are happening throughout, whether between groups of dancers, or in a lone performer’s sequence. The dancers have clearly evolved a shared movement language – it is at once sinuous and precise, and makes moments of touch, or lack of touch, resonate – but each performer’s individual character is also given room to breathe. This is incredibly beautiful to watch, and the minimalist score, developed in rehearsal by Mau Loseto, feels organically connected to the movement, rather than functioning as either a backdrop or a driver.

After an interval, and a short film about the process of developing the work, we were treated to the evening’s second piece, a work in progress called The Other Self . This was a duet, and the two dancers – Guilia Avino and Paola Drera – were mesmerising throughout. Their evident emotional connection created a powerful charge in this intimate portrayal of the dance of friendship; full of love and tenderness but not shying away from dissonance and pain. As a performance, it was immensely moving.

This reviewer only wished that we had been left with the resonance of the performance, rather than segueing into a Q&A. Part of the pleasure of attending a dance show is seeing the human body at its most eloquent; verbal exposition seemed particularly redundant after such physical skill and intensity.

A few things didn’t quite work for me – some of the travelling sequences in the first piece seemed a little too close to contact improvisation in the rehearsal room, and some of the detailed hand work lacked precision – but these tiny quibbles did not take away from an exciting evening with a passionate young company that has a bright future.

Tonight (14th July) is their final night at the Blue Elephant, but I have no doubt that this will not be the last opportunity to spend an evening with Giulia, as it was an evening most assuredly well spent.

 

Reviewed by Rebecca Crankshaw

 

Blue Elephant

 

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