NEVER GET TO HEAVEN IN AN EMPTY SHELL
The Glitch
★★★
“The production is noticeably ambitious … it should be highly commended”
“People on the tube stare, as if they are looking into where my soul should be, and sometimes I hope they might find it.” The setting is a familiar one for any Londoners. We find ourselves watching Claud, as she is waiting for a train at Angel station, when she unexpectedly comes across a ghost, who introduces herself as Ruth. What follows is an intriguing exchange where Claud is finally forced to confront and overcome her own demons to “not let herself rot any longer.”
Never Get to Heaven in an Empty Shell is an interesting one-hander written, performed and produced by Claudia Fielding. Claudia plays our protagonist, Claud, and all of our other characters in the story (including Ruth, the ghost, her brothers and other family members), with an impressive range of accents and impressions to seamlessly slip between different members of the ‘cast’. It is striking how well the solo performer is able to maintain dialogue without faltering throughout the piece. The direction (Anna Rastelli) is similarly on point. This is particularly critical to this performance, as, if the actor had been facing in even the wrong direction at any point, the illusion would instantly crumble. The production is noticeably ambitious, given the size of the cast and set, with what it sets out to achieve and, for this, it should be highly commended.
Early on, we find that Ruth is conspicuously interested in the jumper that Claud is wearing, claiming that it used to be hers. This is a seminal moment in the play. Ruth wants Claud to ‘let go’ of the jumper despite not being able to let go of it herself. Claud doesn’t even like the jumper but claims to still wear it because her sister got it for her. The performance wants to use ‘the jumper’ as a metaphor for holding onto things that are in one’s past that can no longer be changed. ‘The jumper’ in Claud’s life is the death of her father some years before, which she is yet to fully come to terms with. The metaphor is a nice touch but is possibly slightly heavy-handed and not subtle enough to be one of the key features of the plot.
The script also contains a lot of beautiful poetry, which is cleverly written, even with, on occasion, successive lines of the play rhyming. The most notable of this is the titular message: “Never Get to Heaven in an Empty Shell.” This is a slightly less well-known phrase meaning that someone who is emotionally or spiritually empty cannot achieve true happiness.
One gets the impression that this is the key theme that Claudia is trying to convey to the viewers, as a way through her own grief. Many nice but sometimes confusing sub-plots are layered on top of this. Elements such as going to her brother’s wedding in Milan may take away more direction from the plot than they add and at times, loosening the link to the central narrative. However, the play seems to still adequately function as a vehicle for the desired message and cleverly makes fun of an often taboo subject matter.
NEVER GET TO HEAVEN IN AN EMPTY SHELL
The Glitch
Reviewed on 2nd July 2025
by Luke Goscomb
Photography by Lulu Bradshaw
Previously reviewed at this venue:
THE RISE AND FALL OF VINNIE & PAUL | ★★★★ | April 2025
