DARK NATURE at the Canal Café Theatre

★★★

“But Betts, in a flowing, gothic black dress, is a striking presence”

When looking back over our lives, many of us have a ‘before and after’ event lodged in our mind. Some sort of milestone which we use to place memories. Sometimes trivial, often traumatic. What happened ‘before’ remains immutable. The aftershock usually has various, ghostlike pathways as the ‘what if…?’ question echoes internally and insistently. Until we finally realise that the present – and possibly the future – is as unchangeable as the past. There are no ‘sliding doors’ we can control at our whim. Not even in fairy tales.

Michaela Betts, in her atmospheric and candidly personal musical narrative “Dark Nature, seems to have reached that point. It is not always clear how much is autobiographical truth or embellishment, but Betts doesn’t shy away from delivering some dark reminiscences. It is not always comfortable. A meandering stream of consciousness as the show weaves in and out of the realms of fantasy. So much so that it often feels like two unrelated pieces that have converged into an oddly mismatched whole.

But Betts, in a flowing, gothic black dress, is a striking presence. She delivers her story at the piano while, under her schoolmistress like gaze, Antonia Richards relives her younger self. Something happened when she was seven years old. We don’t learn the true, dark nature of this until the end; a finale we are led towards, step by step through songs of innocence and experience. Richards depicts credibly a personality trying to maintain the veneer that everything is still okay (“I was every parent’s dream”) while clearly a childhood has been stolen, and the steps into adulthood are carved in the precipice of self-destruction. As she teeters, losing balance, you almost believe the lie when she repeatedly calls out that “you can’t touch me – I feel nothing”.

Helen Goldwyn’s staging reflects this split personality. One minute ethereal, the next profanely harsh. Some beautiful projected animation draws us in while less successful attempts at audience participation push us away again. Only when Betts sings are we truly rooted. She becomes majestic at the piano, her fragile melodies accompanying her delicately beautiful voice. Unique and melancholic, her songs are dark folk tales in themselves, cinematic in scope but with the intimacy of a campfire. We are seduced but there is always a danger of being burned. No more so than during the closing number “The Rose” with its award-winning animated video projected onto the back wall. The lyrics are the blueprint for this show, the aching melody is the texture that emblazons the outline.

It is a gorgeous moment, but the progression there is uneven. Yet we learn a lot on the way, and are exposed to many important questions of abuse, grooming, body-shaming, gaslighting, coercion, addiction, self-harm, self-esteem. The narrative doesn’t so much touch on these as delivers a punch. But sometimes the swing misses, and the presentation is jarring. To her credit, Betts doesn’t try to supply the answers. “There is no judgement here”. Yet the lack of resolve is a little confusing, and the curtain call suffused with doubt, which we can see written on the performers faces. Is Little Red Riding Hood out of the woods or is the wolf still on her tail?

But “Dark Nature” is a theatrical journey worth taking, if not for Betts’ haunting presence as a singer songwriter. It is the music that truly touches, and lingers into the night. And, of course, the voice.

DARK NATURE at the Canal Café Theatre

Reviewed on 23rd August 2023

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Ben Wulf

More Camden Fringe 2023 Reviews:

Invasion! An Alien Musical | ★★ | Camden People’s Theatre | July 2023

This Girl: The Cynthia Lennon Story | ★★ | Upstairs at the Gatehouse | July 2023

Glad To Be Dead? | ★★ | Hen & Chickens Theatre | July 2023

Maybe I Do? | ★★★★ | Hen & Chickens Theatre | July 2023

Flamenco: Origenes | ★★★★ | Etcetera Theatre | August 2023

All That Glitters | ★★½ | Rosemary Branch Theatre | August 2023

Dead Souls | ★★½ | Etcetera Theatre | August 2023

Kate-Lois Elliott: Gentrif*cked | ★★★ | Museum of Comedy | August 2023

Improv The Dead | ★★★★ | Hen & Chickens Theatre | August 2023

Avocado Presents | ★★★ | Hen & Chickens Theatre | August 2023

Sarah Roberts : Do You Know Who I Am? | ★★★★ | The Bill Murray | August 2023

End Of The World Fm | ★★★ | Cockpit Theatre | August 2023

Ashley Barnhill: Texas Titanium | ★★★★ | Museum of Comedy | August 2023

The Vagina Monologues | ★★★ | Canal Café Theatre | August 2023

Not Like Other Girls | ★★★★ | The Queer Comedy Club | August 2023

Improv Death Match | ★★★★ | Aces and Eights | August 2023

Theatresports | ★★★★ | Museum of Comedy | August 2023

My Body Is Not Your Country | ★★★ | Cockpit Theatre | August 2023

Dark Nature

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★★★

“Bonito is an intense, captivating performer”

My Body is Not Your Country is a piece that exists on the intersection between theatre and performance art. There are multi-media elements and there’s movement, song and spoken word. There are some deeply striking visuals, and phrasing. Both the poetic, lyrical monologues and the powerful physical images are, at times, both beautiful and evocative.

This one-woman show is produced and presented by Marta Bonito, in collaboration with Amanda Gatti and Laura Padilla. It explores the themes of home and belonging. It questions how to define home and weaves in different perspectives and stories of migration. Parts of it tell Bonito’s own story. But other voices, piped through into the auditorium, tell other women’s stories. Bonito switches between a microphone, and her own voice, which differentiates the stories, slightly. She brings two women on stage at the end, who are presumably the voiceovers we hear throughout. They are clearly deeply moved by the performance, and the strength of their emotion is powerful.

Bonito is an intense, captivating performer. She puts her entire heart, soul and body into it. It is wonderfully performed, and she is energetic, bold and confident in the space. There is a moment where she sprints, mostly naked, in circles around the stage, while still monologuing, which is a deeply impressive feat. She does a bit of everything, and proves herself to be well-rounded and multi-talented.

The difficulty is that the piece is trying to do too much. It’s exploring so many themes, and so many stories, that the message, and the point, are lost. The narrative is deliberately muddled, mixing multiple women’s stories, and experiences – but it has a confusing effect. The piece’s fragmentary nature tries to echo the characters’ own fragmented senses of self and identity. But it makes the piece itself hard to follow. The stories, which should be centred in this narrative, become garbled and intertwined, which lessens their power. The voiceovers are also hard to hear, perhaps adding subtitles to the screen could allow a chance for the beauty of the language to be appreciated. It’s difficult to know what to focus on. The rolling film of the beach, the gyrating performer, wrapping herself in a thin tulle scarf, or the voiceover, telling the story of a fleeing woman. It’s a shame, because some moments are stunning, but the overall effect is overcomplicated.

The lighting design is simple, if a little underused. The team opt to use a set of battery powered mini lights on stage, rather than the overhead lights, which does not seem to add much, but is a fun addition to the set.

The set works well; chairs, scarves, books and boxes are strewn about. Bonito hops over books like lily-pads, she clambers on the boxes, contorting herself through them. A microphone in the corner creates a separate section where different stories can be explored. It creates worlds, characters and stories through beautiful imagery. It is a sadness that the piece itself is not more pared down, so it could also succeed in this.

DARK NATURE at the Canal Café Theatre

★★★

“But Betts, in a flowing, gothic black dress, is a striking presence”

DARK NATURE at the Canal Café Theatre

Reviewed on 23rd August 2023

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Ben Wulf

More Camden Fringe 2023 Reviews:

Dark Nature

Dark Nature

MY BODY IS NOT YOUR COUNTRY at the Cockpit Theatre

★★★

“Bonito is an intense, captivating performer”

MY BODY IS NOT YOUR COUNTRY at the Cockpit Theatre

Reviewed on 20th August 2023

by Auriol Reddaway

Previously reviewed at this venue:

My Body is not Your Country

My Body is not Your Country