UNION at the Arcola Theatre

★★★

“amongst the yelling and huffing, there are a lot of poignant and heartfelt moments in Union”

Given the state liberal politics is currently in, it’s understandable there would be a sense of panicked urgency in trying to get an important message across; the time for nuance is over, the time for yelling is now. But didactic theatre, which this ends up being, isn’t super fun for a few reasons: Firstly, no-one likes being yelled at for 90 minutes. Sure, art isn’t always pleasant, but it is supposed to be affective, and after a while this starts to feel less like theatre and more like a public service announcement.

Secondly, if you’ve got a leftist agenda, sermonising to an off-west end theatre audience is likely preaching to the choir. I can’t imagine many passionate capitalists are signing up to see a play about a big-time property developer having a moral crisis. That being said, amongst the yelling and huffing, there are a lot of poignant and heartfelt moments in Union.

Saskia is at the peak of her career. She’s about to sign her biggest development deal which will potentially lead to partnership. But in a moment of insanity- or clarity- she flees the meeting before signing, changes into her very expensive Lycra gear and decides to run the many miles home through London, meeting a plethora of colourful characters along the way, each with a little lesson to impart.

Writer Max Wilkinson’s 2021 play Rainer feels very much like the seed for Union: One main character flies through London, clearly having a breakdown and meeting all sorts on her journey. But where Rainer was focused on a singular experience of personal trauma, Union uses Saskia’s meltdown to convey a much bigger issue: the capitalist sterilisation of big cities. This feels like a more interesting use of the trope, and the script itself feels more sophisticated.

Director Wiebke Green’s recent credits include Philip Ridley’s Poltergeist, The Beast Will Rise, and Tarantula. There’s a definite link between Union and old hand Ridley’s works, but it’s hard to know how much comes from the writing and how much the production. Union has the same non-stop intensity, the same amped up spiralling and the same inevitable ‘big reveal’ when the audience learns a crucial piece of information that explains the aforementioned spiralling, all of which have become Ridley’s trademarks. It’s affecting, sure, but it’s also a bit formulaic now. And just as I found it hard to focus during Ridley’s 85-minute rant Poltergeist last year, I find Union too consistently high-strung to remain interested.

Maintaining this level of high-energy performance, though, is undoubtedly impressive. Dominique Tipper as Saskia never lets up, pounding the stage and virtually spitting out her dialogue throughout. She’s convincing as both the cutthroat corporatist and the wavering moralist. When she leaps back into her teenage past she avoids that often cloying, babyish performance so many people give, and instead presents young Saskia as fully formed if still malleable and vulnerable to sinister forces.

As it happens, set and costume designer Kit Hinchcliffe also worked on Ridley’s Poltergeist, but where there was only one character to dress, and no costume changes, in this production she’s had a little more opportunity to stretch herself. All costume changes happen in full view, with the help of two very full clothing racks. This keeps all the energy on stage, rather than any hurried exits and entries. And given you couldn’t very well design the whole of Regent’s Canal, Hinchcliffe has opted for a near empty stage, and the visible unworn costumes give a little colour to the production.

While this might easily have been a one-person play, with Tipper merely jumping between characters, we have the added pleasure of Sorcha Kennedy and Andre Bullock playing all the bit parts as well as giving live sound effects such as panicked heavy breathing and crying babies. For the most part, this works really well, giving an extra dimension to an otherwise singular voice, and also creating the impression that Saskia is being watched- not just by an audience of 100, but by judging parties in her own world.

Both Kennedy and Bullock are excellent chameleons, using quick costume changes to transform into any number of people. The only time it doesn’t quite fit is with Saskia’s husband Leon. Where every other character is enjoyably cartoonish in comparison to the multi-faceted Saskia, Leon should really be slightly more detailed in order for their complicated alliance to make sense, and this just isn’t possible when Kennedy is switching characters in 30 seconds with the mere addition of a hat and glasses.

The aggressive development of London, or as one character says, the turning of the world in to “one big f*cking Pret” is a real and scary issue. Wilkinson has, in a lot of ways, hit the nail on the head. It’s just that he’s hit it a little too hard.

UNION at the Arcola Theatre

Reviewed on 25th July 2023

by Miriam Sallon

Photography by Lidia Crisafulli

Previously reviewed at this venue:

Duck | ★★★★ | June 2023

Possession | ★★★★★ | June 2023

Under The Black Rock | ★★★ | March 2023

The Mistake | ★★★★ | January 2023

The Poltergeist | ★★½ | October 2022

The Apology | ★★★★ | September 2022

L’Incoronazione Di Poppea | ★★★★ | July 2022

Rainer | ★★★★★ | October 2021

Union

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★★

“Whatever the idea was in its fruition, it’s been lost in the execution”

I am not averse to a little chaos. And I’m often happy to see the conventional, linear form flipped on its head for the sake of communicating a particularly tricky message to the audience. But in the instance of Fruits, Or the Decline of a Distant Memory, I’m not at all sure what the message was supposed to be.

Themes of love, sex and identity run hazily through a series of non sequitur vignettes, surreal and nonsensical: two little girls play various games until one of them is seemingly lost forever in hide-and-seek; someone stands and lists all the possible genders, sexualities, and sexual preferences to the point of absurdity; a woman dressed as Eve, leaves covering her crotch and nipples with a snake wrapped round her neck, proceeds to devour an apple, spit it out, and beat the snake to death. Throughout, fruit is eaten, spat out, and violently smashed to the ground, after which a glittering fruit fly comes to enjoy the spoils whilst telling us about his first sexual encounter.

There’s definitely a lot of humour, which is a relief because something like this could easily take itself far too seriously: a cleaner, whilst ‘cleaning’ the audience, appears to find a baggy of unidentified white powder on a fellow reviewer, and greedily snorts it all up; a boy lays solemnly crying in a woman’s lap, and she peers at the audience, shrugging, “well, fuck this shit.” It’s irreverent and self-aware, but in the context of the rest of the script, it all just seems meaningless.

The design, too, is bizarre: Playing to the length of the long, skinny room, with benches on either side, the audience’s attention is drawn from one end to the other. The lighting is sophisticated, following certain performers with multiple spotlights, or shedding pink and yellow washes across the whole. One scene has a woman desperately chasing an ever-moving spotlight, which is actually very funny. But sometimes a monologue is carried out in darkness, whilst the audience remains well-lit, or a spotlight appears halfway through a scene. It feels both purposeful and poorly chosen. If you’re going to require the audience to seek out the next voice on such a long stage, you have to show them where to look. On top of that, in an attempt to create a dream-like atmosphere, there’s so much reverb on the mics that quite a lot of the script is lost to the already cavernous room.

Whatever the idea was in its fruition, it’s been lost in the execution. TAKDAJA prove themselves to be very capable, diverse performers, but the script needs a lot more guidance.

Reviewed on 1st March 2023

by Miriam Sallon

Photography by Lidia Crisafulli

UNION at the Arcola Theatre

★★★

“amongst the yelling and huffing, there are a lot of poignant and heartfelt moments in Union”

UNION at the Arcola Theatre