[Review] Lay Down Your Burdens, Rhiannon Faith Company – a good mix of comedy and pathos

In Rhiannon Faith’s latest work, The Pit becomes a pub; a place in which punters reveal their intimate feelings in a communal sharing that may have once carried a grain of truth but is now far from reality.

Ruling the roost at this unnamed hostelry, two floors below ground in the bowels of The Barbican, is Sara – a good-natured, homely landlady – played by Sara Turner (all characters take the first name of their performer) who combines amateur psychology with a magical power to procure drinks from a small circular bar: pints of Guinness or blue and pink daiquiris appear as if from nowhere in her peculiar brand of alchemy. The very idea of alcohol as the accompaniment to laying down one’s burdens seems peculiarly dated and not nowadays a recipe for improved mental health.

Sara introduces her tiny band of six regulars, portrayed by four dancers and two musicians, each of whom is carrying an emotional burden, such as Shelley (Shelley Eva Haden), a solicitor in a smart suit who comes to drown her considerable sorrows from Sara’s glassware. One might ask how a pub can survive with just six customers and where money never seems to change hands for the payment of any drink but, for the former, the audience provides the greater clientele with some seated on bar stools at circular tables immediately surrounding the in-the-round performance space. Naomi Daboczi’s design for the pub is excellent right down to the patterned carpet (if a mouse – known as a “charley” across the licensed pub trade – had run across it, it would have made for the perfect evocation).  

Into this mix comes Donnie (Donald Hutera), a mysterious American stranger burdened by both physical luggage and emotional baggage, the two conjoined by his mother’s ashes, apparently contained in a coffee flask. In another departure from reality, this total stranger is immediately taken into the intimacy of Sara and her regular crew, laying his burdens on them as soon as he had downed that first daiquiri. I hate to imagine what would have happened to him in most actual pubs of my acquaintance!

Turner and Hutera are excellent and believable character actors. Wearing a leopard-themed top of the kind that Corrie’s Bet Lynch would have worn with similar assurance, Turner dominated her pub with a benevolent assertiveness that was coloured by a perfumed splash of eroticism, while Hutera gave a courageous account of a man lost in all senses of the word, trying to make some sense of his mother’s attempted suicide (it was never quite clear whether she had succeeded or survived and then died sometime later).

Haden was a tower of strength in both her own spoken text and as a dancer. Three times she leapt into the same frenetic solo, including a spectacular high kick, to Dusty Springfield’s I Only Want To Be With You, played on the jukebox at Sara’s command. The audience is eventually shown a grainy homemade film of a blonde tiny tot dancing to the same song, the title of which seemed a clue to the loss of her film-making father (but that’s just my assumption). The other three dancers – Finetta Sidgwick (Finn), Dominic Coffey (Dom) and Sam Ford (Sam) – each carried their own burden, which was gradually revealed in text and deed. When Sara came through a curtain to portray Dolly Parton in a Stars in Their Eyes parody, she was quickly followed by Dom, also comically dressed as the country star with an absurd blonde, curly wig falling in front of his eyes and mouth as he tried to loudly (and off-key) belt out a Parton classic!  A more sensitive onstage musical performance came from Anna Clock (cello) and India Merrett (violin) performing a score largely composed by John Victor.

A significant element of the performance was provided through members of the audience being invited to dance, play games and speak into microphones, variously asked to explain what they thought was beautiful amongst similar requests. It’s a risky business not knowing what their answers will be and even riskier when they can’t be heard (and I found most of the audience’s observations to be inaudible, which rather ruined the point). The emphasis on audience participation made the show, particularly in its second act, muddled, ponderous and dull to the point that I found myself wishing the end to come soon: this feeling was doubly encouraged by woefully uncomfortable seats!

The idea of dance theatre being inspired by issues of mental health is laudable and one instinctively feels that Faith’s vision for this work should be supported. The structured text (devised by dramaturg, Lou Cope, in association with the ‘devising performers’) is broadly a good mix of comedy and pathos and the bursts of harmonised group dance, although infrequent, are also excellent. But, in a very important sense, this is a show that is let down by its audience being required to shoulder too much of the performance expectation. In this essential respect, less would certainly have been more.

About the Rhiannon Faith Company

Rhiannon Faith Company makes radically tender dance theatre, working nationally on big stages and locally with communities on the margins, always with social change and care at its heart.

We are brave, compassionate, and fearlessly push the boundaries of performance to make shows that speak to, reach and bring people together.

Our daring and audacious spirit drives sector change by delivering socially engaged, unforgettable shows and legacy packages. We go to the heart of injustice, working collaboratively with local communities, participants, artists, third sector partners and arts organisations to ensure our work serves the people and promotes community belonging and empathy.

Based in Harlow, Essex, with nation-wide impact, we are making bold, ambitious moves to secure a future as global leaders in original dance theatre with a social purpose, to champion community transformation and authentic belonging for all.

Graham Watts

Graham Watts is a freelance writer and dance critic. He writes for The Spectator, Tanz, Shinshokan Dance Magazine (Japan), Ballet Magazine (Romania), BachTrack and the Hong Kong International Arts Festival and has previously written for the Sunday Express, Dancing Times, Dance Europe, DanceTabs, London Dance, the Edinburgh International Festival and Pointe magazine (USA).  He has also written the biography of Daria Klimentová (The Agony and the Ecstasy) and contributed chapters about the work of Akram Khan to the Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Ballet and on Shobana Jeyasingh for the third edition of Routledge’s Fifty Contemporary Choreographers.

He is Chairman of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle and of the UK National Dance Awards and regularly lectures on dance writing and criticism at The Royal Academy of Dance, The Place and (until the war) for Balletristic in Kyiv.  He was a nominee for the Dance Writing Award in the 2018 One Dance UK Awards and was appointed OBE in 2008.