STOREHOUSE

Deptford Storehouse

★★★½

“a multifaceted and engaging experience”

In a Deptford warehouse that was once the paper store for London’s newspaper industry, Storehouse (created by Liana Patarkatsishvili) is an immersive theatre production that questions the role of the internet and the twenty-four-hour news cycle in shaping our reality and the changing relationship between facts, news, and opinion.

The journey begins outside with a glass of sparkling wine and a paper guide that explains the premise: in 1983, at the birth of the internet, a group of visionaries opened the Storehouse, intending to convert all human data into binary code and which could then be catalogued, with the intention of collating it all on the First of January 2025. This moment, termed the Great Aggregation, would lead to the discovery of a universal, liberatory truth. We enter after the failure of this project.

Sorted into rooms to begin the experience, we are tasked with helping the employees of Storehouse – who have not left since 1983 – resolve the issue and proceed with the Great Aggregation. Passing through the doors into the cavernous warehouse we enter a low, cool space punctuated with columns, and from there into a waiting room. From this point onwards the performance incorporates everything from oaths and discussions to fortune cookies and votes, creating a multifaceted and engaging experience.

The actors we encounter along the way are all excellent. Fully embracing the retro 1980s environment, they walk us through the Storehouse’s collection, assessment and shelving processes while sharing their backstories and professional grievances – and dancing to Karma Chameleon whenever it plays over the Tannoy. Special mention goes to the Zachary Pang who guided our group through the maze of the Storehouse with aplomb. They are supported by a stellar cast of voice actors, that appear in video or audio: Toby Jones, Meera Syal, Kathryn Hunter and Billy Howle.

The sprawling staging (production designer Alice Helps), littered with 80s technology, and overgrown with a mossy, fungal-like substance, transports the audience to a strange – but strangely familiar – world, even down to the level of smells which permeate the rooms, bringing us further into the experience. The clothes (Julie Belinda Landau) are also fantastic, all silk shirts, braces and big shoulder pads, conjuring a moment of time frozen from the recent past.

Without wanting to give too much away, as I think going in cold enhances the experience, the structure of the show reflects its content, with participants invited to interact with one another, before, during and after the performance. There are multiple moments for a complementary drink, and I can say that the non-alcoholic cocktails are amazing. Conversation between strangers is encouraged: ‘a friend may be waiting behind a stranger’s face’, as we try together to understand our contemporary reality.

While I felt that the message was not groundbreaking, Storehouse was a very enjoyable and different experience and would be a gripping and provocative way to spend an evening with friends, or indeed to meet new people, re-focusing us on the importance of real-life, interpersonal connections, however fleeting. Ending on the deck of a free bar, looking across the Thames to Canary Wharf, I couldn’t help but think of the relationships between the centres of global economic power and the information ecosystems that help uphold them, Storehouse’s setting offering a final opportunity to consider its message.

STOREHOUSE

Deptford Storehouse

Reviewed on 11th June 2025

by Rob Tomlinson

Photography by Helen Murray

STOREHOUSE

THE PRINCE at the Southwark Playhouse

★★★

“Over the course of the play, no antagonist is revealed, and little conflict truly arises, resulting in a flat conclusion”

Performance itself lies at the heart of The Prince, Abigail Thorn’s playwriting debut at Southwark Playhouse’s Large Theatre. Characters find themselves stuck inside a multiverse of Shakespearean dramas (Though the action is mostly confined to Henry IV Part I) and at odds with the rigidity of their roles. Sam, played by Joni Ayton-Kent, who is cast as a number of nameless bit characters, is desperately searching for a way out. Mary Malone plays Jen, who finds herself in a similar situation and decides to tag along with Sam. Jen, however, finds tensions within the ways in which the primary characters perform their gender, and begins to poke holes in their constructed identities. In particular, Jen reads Thorn’s Hotspur as a trans woman and Corey Montague Sholay’s Prince Hal as a gay man. Over the course of the play, both characters waffle between conformity to their roles and self-actualization, a broader metaphor for the struggles endured and decisions faced when butting up against a rigid gender binary, especially the construct of masculinity. Though The Prince suffers from a lack of narrative coherence, the metaphor is powerful and at times quite personally affecting.

Thorn and Malone, both in principal roles, turn in strong performances. Malone plays Jen’s fish-out-of-water bewilderment with earnest charm and comedic timing. The funniest moments of the play come from the ways in which other characters play off of hers. Thorn, as Hotspur, carries the show. She peels back her character’s internal tension in careful layers and remains nimble and forceful in her handling of both her own verse and Shakespeare’s. The scenes in which she actively decides to continue in the role of the masculine hero at the expense of her own identity carry tremendous weight. It is unfortunate then, that the structural foundation of the play is unable to support these performances.

The Prince seems to eschew both coherent world-building and narrative signposting, both of which are essential when leading an audience through a multiverse. The moments when Jen is able to break the Shakespearean characters out of their performances are nearly indistinguishable for the moments when they remain stuck. In essence, these breaks happen at random, giving Jen little to learn about the mechanics of the world into which she has been dropped. Sam’s desire to escape should be easily aided by a magical map of sorts, represented by a somewhat unconvincing plastic tetrahedron, but the object only appears all-powerful in Jen’s hands, though no context is given to allow the audience to understand this discrepancy. These two characters are also denied specific or rich inner lives, even an inkling of who they might be outside of their current situation. The multiverse device primarily exists in absentia, as most of Sam and Jen’s haphazard narrative hopping occurs within Henry IV Part I. The play’s only detour into Hamlet arrives without much context and serves only as justification to shoehorn in the “To be, or not to be?” soliloquy, though Thorn delivers it well. Over the course of the play, no antagonist is revealed, and little conflict truly arises, resulting in a flat conclusion.

Martha Godfrey’s lighting design feels similarly uneven. The tubes of LED light that hang at odd angles above the playing space are visually compelling and seem to indicate different corners of the Shakespearean multiverse. But their function remains out of sync with the play throughout, illuminating, changing colours, falling and rising without impetus or textual justification. Rebecca Cartwright’s historical costumes, on the other hand, are a strong point of the play’s design—the ways in which they mutate alongside Jen’s poking and prodding is masterful.

Though it contains joyous and raucous moments, as well as symbolic significance, Thorn’s debut remains unnecessarily messy throughout, wanting for narrative drive and formal consistency.

STOREHOUSE

Deptford Storehouse

★★★½

“a multifaceted and engaging experience”

STOREHOUSE

Deptford Storehouse

Reviewed on 11th June 2025

by Rob Tomlinson

Photography by Helen Murray

Recently reviewed by Rob:

STOREHOUSE

STOREHOUSE

STOREHOUSE

THE PRINCE at the Southwark Playhouse

★★★

“Over the course of the play, no antagonist is revealed, and little conflict truly arises, resulting in a flat conclusion”

Though it contains joyous and raucous moments, as well as symbolic significance, Thorn’s debut remains unnecessarily messy throughout, wanting for narrative drive and formal consistency.

Reviewed on 19th September 2022

by JC Kerr

Photography by Mark Senior

Previously reviewed at this venue:

JOIN US