An utterly en-deer-ing, burned-in-your-brain ride of nothing and everything.
There aren’t many shows in which, within the first five minutes, a whole deer can swing from the rafters, crash-land onstage, and make everything that might have been unclear until that moment, suddenly make absolute sense. Natalie Palamides’ one-woman romantic dramedy WEER is one of them.
The show is so unique, it’s nearly impossible to talk about it without spilling too many beans. It’s also difficult to put into words the performance of an artist who has been praised for her “kamikaze physicality.” But I hope my failure to articulate what I experienced on Friday night – at the inaugural show at Soho Theatre Walthamstow – only serves as moving proof that putting money on any remaining tickets is a worthwhile investment.
Palamides first premiered the show at the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe, where she has enjoyed critical acclaim for previous Fringe hits “Laid” (2018) and “Nate” (2020), which landed her a Netflix special. Given the no-seats-spared reception on opening night, it is clear that her newest one-woman piece has its fair share of supporters.
The winning part of the show is its brazen simplicity: a 90’s romantic comedy between a man (Mark) and a woman (Christina) who have a classic (and pretty abusive, on Mark’s part) fight at a New Year’s Eve party in 1999. Palamides plays both at the same time – Mark on the right side of her body, Christina on her left. What follows are ninety minutes of theatre so unhinged and so riotously funny, it leaves one constantly wondering things like “How did she just do that?” and “Did a deer really just fall from the sky?”
The outrageous simplicity of the plot, however, does not mask for one moment the doubly outrageous skill that Palamides thrusts on the playing table. In countless moments, I had to gather myself after sequences of physical comedy that utterly shattered what I thought physical comedy could even be. Special mention is sorely due Palamides’ brilliant use of the two halves of her body to simultaneously play both characters. There is no attempt to hide this simplest of devices. Nor is there any attempt to take the story too seriously. From her near-violent tossing of props across the stage (including a broom she uses to push those props out of the way) and her flagrantly sloppy use of materials both liquid and air-borne, Palamides maintains, for the full ninety minutes, a heightened energy that hits the sweet spot of ingeniously self-aware comedy.
To witness Palamides in her element is perhaps one of the most unexpected and alive experiences I’ve felt in a theatre in a long time: it doesn’t feel real, often makes no logical sense, but you sit there at the end counting your lucky stars that you were there and nowhere else when whatever it was that just happened onstage before you, happened.