Tag Archives: VAULT Festival 2020

Lòng Mẹ

★★★★

VAULT Festival 2020

ReviewsLòng Mẹ, Michael Phong Le, Mimi Monteith, Mingyu Lin, Tuyen Do, VanThanh Productions, VAULT Festival 2020thespyinthestalls

Lòng Mẹ

Pit – The Vaults

Reviewed – 3rd March 2020

★★★★

“This humour with subtextual glints of trauma was brilliantly realised and effortlessly portrayed”

As the title indicates, Lòng Mẹ translates from Vietnamese to English to mean ‘Mother’s Soul’. VanThanh Productions presented its titled theme gracefully with two very different stories, cathartically linked to recognise the power of ancestry and give insight into Vietnamese heritage.

As the audience were sitting down, Tuyen Do and Michael Phong Le sat on the minamilistic set and called on the audience, welcoming them in and asking them to sit down, all the while speaking in thick Vietnamese accents. Comments such as ‘You sir, you so handsome, come sit at the front’ induced humour from the stereotype and set a light hearted tone in the theatre. This quality was emulated throughout the production, acting as a powerful juxtaposition to the heart-breaking stories which unfolded.

Tuyen Do’s story was told through a masterclass in voice acting. Do seamlessly glided from a thick Vietnamese accent to a London accent as she portrayed both herself and her mother simultaneously in conversation. This allowed for a strong, punchy insight to her struggle to relate to her mother due to growing up with two opposing cultures at the same time. As she told the story of this relationship, beautiful and traumatising anecdotes including the hiding of gold bars in dead chickens, so that they might be able to trade on the black market during the Vietnam war, were both awe inspiring and funny. But the mood was quickly turned when we are told of her family’s citizenship being stripped due to fighting on the American side during the Vietnam war. This humour with subtextual glints of trauma was brilliantly realised and effortlessly portrayed.

Phong Le’s story was similar to Do’s in that it focused on the struggle of relating to a different generation, brought up during a very different time. However, Do’s story fixated more prominently on the ‘constant internal conflict’ of his coming to terms with his Vietnamese heritage, when he was brought up in the contrasting culture of the UK countryside. Phong Le’s performance was honest and delivered with a gentleness which worked beautifully. His ability to portray himself as a small child, through to being an adolescent and then an adult worked brilliantly as he told a story about his mother going to prison and his own questioning surrounding the incident with a raw innocence.

Mingyu Lin’s direction allowed the pair to transition between stories with simple dance sequences, this seemed a little unnecessary as an attempt to create a link between the two and a distraction from the honest conversations each performer gave. However, Lin’s direction shone through Phong Le’s performance; as he clutched a Rubik’s cube throughout the show, highlighting his naivety to his surroundings; it was clear that Lin’s attention to detail was meticulous here and that a great deal of thought had gone into it.

The production as a whole was awe inspiring, only let down by the unnecessary measures taken to link performances which would have stood strong and linked easily without them.

Reviewed by Mimi Monteith

Click here to see all our reviews from VAULT Festival 2020

Closed Lands

★★★

VAULT Festival 2020

ReviewsBecka McFadden, Catharina Conte, Closed Lands, Daiva Dominyka, Jon Millington, Jonathan Evans, Jonathan Millington, Lara Parmiana, Laure Fernandez, LegalAliens Theatre, Luiana Bonfim, Simon Grangeat, Steve Gregson, VAULT Festival 2020thespyinthestalls

Closed Lands

Cage – The Vaults

Reviewed – 3rd March 2020

★★★

“it sometimes feels that they are trying too hard to make up our minds for us”

The fall of the Berlin Wall, over thirty years ago, is still regarded as a momentous event both physically and psychologically. Since then, however, European countries alone have reportedly built over a thousand kilometres of walls along their borders – the equivalent of six times the length of the Berlin Wall. Pan out across the Atlantic and we have the political theatre of Donald Trump’s obsession with his “big beautiful wall” along the US-Mexico border. All very real, but also just as real are the metaphorical walls of bureaucracy that face migrants and asylum seekers across the globe. These are the issues tackled by LegalAliens, a company comprised entirely of migrants in the UK. Fusing poetry with traditional storytelling, movement and multimedia they chronicle humanity’s infatuation with building walls.

“Closed Lands” (translated by Laure Fernandez) is adapted from Simon Grangeat’s short play, ‘Terres Closes’. Grangeat was inspired to write it after witnessing the arrest of the migrant father of one of the children at his daughter’s school. Written as a series of poems from varying points of view, LegalAliens have adopted this format intelligently to avoid the pitfalls of presenting a documentary diatribe. The all-female ensemble – Luiana Bonfim, Daiva Dominyka, Catharina Conte, Becka McFadden and Lara Parmiani – directed by McFadden give voice to the contrasting archetypes, the victims and culprits of the issues surrounding world migration: the politicians, citizens, migrants; the media, the lawyers, the racketeers and resistance. They take turns assuming the various roles while a backdrop of projected news footage fills in the global view.

There are times we feel harangued as all shades of grey are erased from the subject to reveal clear cut, black and white perspectives with no room for debate. Very rapidly we learn the targets of their satire and the subjects of their sympathy, after which the drama – and the humour – becomes somewhat predictable, lessening the potential impact. Where this production is more successful is in its exploration of the figurative walls that are constructed by those with power and that those without are forced to cower behind. In the Western World we (nearly) all rejoiced in the fall of the Berlin Wall, but what is more poignant and powerful is the gradual fall of the invisible wall in people’s minds.

That is the direction LegalAliens is trying to lead us with their thoughtful exposition. But it sometimes feels that they are trying too hard to make up our minds for us. As an audience, we don’t necessarily need converting. However, we do need entertaining, and with its eclectic approach to mixing theatrical styles, “Closed Lands” certainly breaks down the fourth wall to achieve this.

Reviewed by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Steve Gregson

Click here to see all our reviews from VAULT Festival 2020