THEATRE

Centring around a Mexican immigrant on death row; although his incarnation is unclear for a while, the non-linear narrative explores the relationship to his aloof daughter, and his new girlfriend and how these relationship fluctuations alter the dynamics of the piece.

Considering ‘You Need Me’ are a storytelling theatre company, the plot is a little confusing, perhaps sacrificed at the expense of exploring the creativity of the piece. However it was by no means unintelligible, and did contain an interesting narrative twist, but it felt very rushed. As it was only an hour long, perhaps with a longer slot it could have reached its full potential and tied up the loose ends in the plot. It certainly felt like a working progress, which ultimately it is; as on the company website, the shows blurb is under a different show title altogether, under the projects in development heading.

As so much of the action takes place in the aisle and even right up behind the raked seating, from my front row seat I suffered from craning my neck to watch the performance and decided early on that I would just have to listen to the action taking place behind me and chance a few painful glances every so often. Although creatively, this decision worked quite well in the portaloo sized performance space, it felt like a piece of theatre which had been developed for a much larger space making the most of what they eventually had.

The shows main asset which drove the piece was its effective use of live sound effects, and music, which was layered with pre-recorded music successfully.  For the sound effects, the actors created these in plain view, amplifying a variety of props with a microphone to create a sound score which was perfectly timed to their mimetic movements. This clever feature really gave the overall concept something to cling onto, and without it, the aesthetic would have nose-dived.