The party isn’t dead, but it needs another bump
After Party is a new performance piece written and performed by Annie Lowry Thomas, accompanied throughout by DJ Erfan Shojanoori. It weaves together her personal experience of politics in the UK, from New Labour sweeping into power just before the millennium, right up to the election of Keir Starmer this year. She uses spoken word, an interactive audience question game, clips from election coverage, and plenty of good humour to lead the audience along.
However, the piece never quite feels like it lifts itself off the ground. The sequence where we’re invited to join her in a party when hope is within reach as the Tories are pummelled in 97 feels cheerful, but never elated. The moment when the music gets too loud and she can no longer hear herself speak, as the chaos of politics from 2016 onwards feels tense, but never overwhelming. You exit the theatre with a sense that you almost saw something great, but it never pushes the envelope enough to actually reach it.
The election footage used to demonstrate the 97 election doesn’t feel like it’s been used particularly effectively, almost feeling like it’s used to give Annie a breather from her hour-long monologue. It’s telling the facts, sure, but it doesn’t give us any real point of view to latch on to, or any interesting editing or scoring to demonstrate Annie or her parents’ emotions about the event.
Similarly, the section where she invites an audience member onstage to play her mother feels slightly under-thought out. She doesn’t interact with her meaningfully other than talking at her, leaves her to sit on the sofa throughout the election footage playing, and sends her back to her seat without much fanfare. It feels like a missed opportunity, and without any other audience members invited onstage it feels out of sync with the rest of the performance (which could perhaps have been remedied with others invited onstage – perhaps a Jeremy Corbyn stand-in, as she begs him to take her back?).
The one moment I felt it reached some pathos was when she represented the experience of covid as lying in a bath for two years – with some great lighting design by Louise Gregory representing the bath as a rectangle on the floor, Annie lies down and watches her skin wrinkle, her life flying by, and becoming numb to everything she once cared about. for young people across the country who have been bombarded with unprecedented events and politics their whole adolescence, it really strikes a chord.
Ultimately, After Party does have some great laughs, particularly in the cheeky “Party Questions” game played with the audience, and some great music by Erfan Shojanoori keeping the pace going. And it does have something honest and timely to say about how young people experience politics and the world around them, and how we need to break out of our apathy to resurrect our hopes. It just needs to let itself get a little bit wilder and looser, to truly get the party started.