★★★

“a muscular play with strong storytelling and an important message”

From the history of horror and trauma suffered by European Jews through the Second World War comes a piece that many of us know little about.

In May 1941 Germany bombed, invaded and then occupied Crete. In Long After the Labyrinth we look at the impact on the island’s Romaniote Jews, who settled there some 2,300 years ago and who at the time of the occupation numbered in the hundreds.

Writer Jonathan D’Young and director Ramon Ayres have taken this start point to create a fictional narrative following the fortunes, before, during and after the war, of a young Jewish girl, Rena. She is hidden when her people are rounded up, escaping deportation but losing her entire birth family when they are shipped away by boat.

This is a complex and poignant piece, interweaving the ancient history of Crete and the Labyrinth with Rena’s lived experience of psychological trauma. The Minotaur of the ancient myths becomes a metaphor for the horror and rage that never entirely leaves her.

An impressive list of collaborators, including The Ancient Peace Studies Network and NMT Automatics, has helped bring Rena’s story to life. On what I assume was a minimal budget, the team make highly creative use of lighting, music, projections and screens. This last takes the form of an unmissable curtain that almost deserves to be cited as a cast member, helping us shift time and place, and enter, at points, the labyrinth itself.

Genevieve Dunne plays Rena in a standout performance, growing from early childhood to old woman. Her versatility and emotional range hold everything together. This matters because, although she is supported by a highly able cast (Leonie Hill, Harry Lukakis and Noah Young) who take on the multiple parts, the changes of roles can hover on the edge of confusion. Mostly sufficient distinction in their performances avoids the trap.

There is no avoiding the fact that this drama has an agenda: to explore trauma and the difficulty of achieving personal peace long after external peace has been declared. It uses an interesting mix of ancient and modern to do so. The result is some over-writing and creative excess. The narrative is a little too long for comfort and relies on audience familiarity with history.

That said, it is a muscular play with strong storytelling and an important message about peacebuilding, worth seeing for Dunne’s performance and the inventiveness of the creative team.

THE DANCE PLAGUE OF 1518

Upstairs at the Gatehouse

★★★

“the sheer sense of fun ultimately wins us over”

There are little pockets of history that often go unnoticed until brought to the attention of an enterprising and energised theatre company. I, for one, was unaware of the true historical epidemic known as the ‘Dance Plague’ that struck Strasbourg in 1518. Judging by this current stage adaptation, the four actors (Caoimhe de Brun, Harrison MacDonald-Taylor, Sam Trotman and Finn Tickel) re-enacting the events are just as much in the dark. Armed with a basic scrapbook of archival material, they take creative licence to the extreme and “fill in the gaps”, as they repeatedly tell us – even in song.

The ‘Dance Plague’ was a bizarre outbreak of frenzied, uncontrollable dancing. The phenomenon began with a single woman – Frau Troffea (Caoimhe de Brun) – dancing silently in the scorching summer heat for nearly a week. Others joined in and at its peak over four hundred people were afflicted, many of whom danced until exhaustion, heart attacks or strokes claimed their lives. Speculation as to the cause was rife. Theories included crops poisoned by a hallucinogenic fungi, spider bites, stress related mass hysteria, overheated blood or divine punishment for their sins. Suggested cures were equally outlandish, but eventually the ‘choreomania’ subsided by itself after a couple of months.

The four cast members play an impressive number of characters, from a king to a street beggar with everything in between. It takes a while to reach the heart of the story; the narrative waylaid by the brazen artistic liberty the writers, Tickel and Trotman, have taken. The premise is that four musical theatre actors are holed up in a rehearsal room equipped with the title of the show, but little else. They are busking it. This quasi-improvised approach blends well with the self-mocking delivery that is often funny and always chaotic. Shades of Monty Python appear unexpectedly, adding to the silliness of the proceedings. The pizzazz of the performers has to be applauded, each a fireball of energy unfazed by the frequent prop and set mishaps and Harry Heslop’s erratic and often misbehaving lighting.

It is a tough act to pull off entirely successfully. It is without doubt an adult show, masquerading as a ‘Theatre in Education’ touring act. Littered with profanities, bawdy humour and morally controversial innuendos, the whole evening is presented in a consistently exaggerated style as though we are primary school kids with a microscopic attention span. With references to ‘Six’ and to ‘Hamilton’ we are told, at one point, that “history lessons can be fun”. Much of the exposition could, and should, be curtailed; while the repeated conceit that these characters are ad-libbing way out of their depth promptly loses its punch.

Tickel and Trotman’s songs are a mix of the inventive and the generic. With a three-piece band of keys, drums and guitar, the arrangements lack the drive of the cast, invariably leaving the actors to motor on with the musicians meekly following behind, the instruments lying too low in the mix with little variety or texture. A couple of numbers stand out. ‘Bottom of the List’ is a fun and clever number, and ‘The Priest Song’ allows Trotman to channel Tim Curry’s Rocky Horror campness – albeit in a cassock instead of a corset. ‘Dance Fever’, the closing number for Act One, is a medley of references that defies logic and formula but is a fitting showstopper.

The company are clearly enjoying themselves, and the sweat pouring off them by curtain call matches the sweat they have clearly put into the production. Yet despite the maelstrom of activity, there are moments when the piece lags. But when the momentum picks up, and new characters emerge again (how many can you fit into a two-hour show?) we are joyfully back on board. Fast paced and physical it sometimes trips over itself but, unlike Noga Gilboa’s cardboard set, manages to stay standing to the end. It just needs a touch more solidity to reign in the wafty tangents that waylay the flow of the story. Nevertheless, the sheer sense of fun ultimately wins us over.

Tag Archives: Upstairs at The Gatehouse

LONG AFTER THE LABYRINTH

★★★

Upstairs at the Gatehouse

LONG AFTER THE LABYRINTH

Upstairs at the Gatehouse

★★★

“a muscular play with strong storytelling and an important message”

LONG AFTER THE LABYRINTH

Upstairs at the Gatehouse

Reviewed on 23rd October 2026

by Louise Sibley

Photography by Inigo Woodham-Smith

LONG AFTER THE LABYRINTH

LONG AFTER THE LABYRINTH

LONG AFTER THE LABYRINTH

LONG AFTER THE LABYRINTH

THE DANCE PLAGUE OF 1518

★★★

Upstairs at the Gatehouse

THE DANCE PLAGUE OF 1518

Upstairs at the Gatehouse

★★★

“the sheer sense of fun ultimately wins us over”