★★★★

“incredibly beautifully written with effortless alternation between comedy and horror”

“Oh, can we just start over?” Gabriela Flarys asks the audience as she pretends to forget her lines. The line is of course deliberate and is referring to something else – the recent ending of her relationship. Gabriela is lost and is looking for a way through. She is in pain and is struggling to keep a lid on the thoughts that will not stop flowing as she tries to work out why her relationship is over.

Deluge is an apt title to this marvellous solo performance. Emotions, thoughts, and passion pour out of Gabriela in this intense 60-minute retelling of ‘the end’, as she calls it throughout. The performance is frenetic as she jumps from one stage of grief to the next. There are many individual plot lines which present themselves as loose ends initially. The consistent reference to her former partner’s affection for jam and a two week holiday to Australia to try and save the relationship are just two. However, Gabriela brings together all of these threads alongside the experiences of over forty other people in a recount of grief that hits all the senses.

The script is incredibly beautifully written with effortless alternation between comedy and horror. The comedy brings us the triviality of the world jam championship and a recital of an alphabetical list of fruit. The horror brings us the reality of the feeling of interminable hopelessness that most of us will have experienced at some point.

The set is simple but makes excellent use of props with visual metaphors adding to the story. Gabriela starts the play stuck in a ladder, unable to get through it or go anywhere without it, like the emotions that she is experiencing. When she does free herself from it, she still finds herself stuck. The literal reason being due to the stacks of jam jars in her house, the emotional reason far deeper. Andrea Maciel’s direction of the plot is spellbinding, and the lighting (Madison Maycock) was entrancing, always amplifying the mood of the scene. Credit should also be given for costume design (Anouk Van Der). Flarys wears a white dress covered with red marks, but this could easily be a bloodied straitjacket.

The ending of the play feels slightly rushed and does not take the audience on the same journey that the rest of the show does. Gabriela’s conversations with her piano are an unnecessary addition, as she does a fantastic job of steering the plot by herself without needing to clumsily introduce an additional character.

However, that should not take away from a breathtaking performance from start to finish. Flarys and Maciel will struggle to match the level of drama and excitement in their next works, but I look forward to watching it.

ROB AUTON: THE EYES OPEN AND SHUT SHOW

Soho Theatre

★★★½

“Auton – with the soul of a poet – is funny, self-deprecating, eager to please and brimful of hope”

Genial optimist and shaman-in-a-suit Rob Auton asks us to close our eyes at the opening of his set. For a while we sit in the dark. He asks, have we ever worn trainers that fit as snugly as our eyes in their sockets?

Ironically – for we are briefly blind – he then invites us to see life as he does: full of wonder and curiosity and moments of accidental scintillation.

For the next hour, the comedian conjures worlds where the advice on the side of a washing up liquid bottle – leave the dirtiest dishes till last to keep the water cleaner for longer – is evidence of universal kindness.

He shambles around on stage, a self-confessed hopeless mic-wrangler, appearing like “Harry Styles, only old and depressed”. He has long hair and a beard, like Jesus, which is good for a gag or two.

The ultimate shuteye is death, of course. He reflects on a visit to Heptonstall cemetery where Sylvia Plath is buried (“that’s the kind of stag do’s I get invited to”). He notes how the poet’s fans have left pens and pencils on her headstone. He admires a life that could inspire such affection.

But thinking further, he asks whether he’d swap places – dead with headstone pens or alive with pen in hand.

Alive, he believes, always alive. And what follows is an aching entreaty to the living from all those buried alongside Sylvia Plath, each yearning to return to old hobbies now denied them. Auton is not above moving sincerity in between the cute gags. Indeed, that’s his act.

But then he’s back to life’s oddities. Take blinking. He conjures a parallel world where everything is the same except people make a clucking noise when they blink.

He shambles through his set, delightfully capricious. He swears there’s a script, but he sounds like a wacky dad looking out the car window making on-the-fly observations to entertain bored kids. These thoughts often coalesce into what one might recognise as a joke, other times not so much. (Punchlines are not a priority, he declares early on). There is a fuzzy Work In Progress feel for which his charm mostly, if not entirely, compensates.

This is a funny and surprisingly touching tribute to life as a slender moment of awareness packed with opportunity. We leave the theatre high on his hippyish zeal and optimism.

The show has yet to find its full potential. But in the meantime, Auton – with the soul of a poet – is funny, self-deprecating, eager to please and brimful of hope. The winter chill is thawed by his sunny rays.

DELUGE

Soho Theatre

★★★★

“incredibly beautifully written with effortless alternation between comedy and horror”

DELUGE

Soho Theatre

Reviewed on 18th February 2025

by Luke Goscomb

Photography by Julia Testas

Recently reviewed at this venue:

DELUGE

DELUGE

DELUGE

ROB AUTON: THE EYES OPEN AND SHUT SHOW

Soho Theatre

★★★½

“Auton – with the soul of a poet – is funny, self-deprecating, eager to please and brimful of hope”

ROB AUTON: THE EYES OPEN AND SHUT SHOW

Soho Theatre then UK Tour continues

Reviewed on 1st February 2025

by Giles Broadbent

Photography by Rhys Rodrigues

Previously reviewed at this venue:

ROB AUTON

ROB AUTON

ROB AUTON