Author: Eoin Fenton

REVIEW: Piazzolla Four Seasons of Buenos Aires with Neave Trio

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Rating: 4 out of 5.

The Neave Trio brings the heat to the concert hall.

King’s Place continues their “Memory Unwrapped” series with the Neave Trio providing an evening that spans across the Americas. The three composers of the evening paint a theme of home and belonging. We learn of the celebrated  Argentinian composer Astor Piazzolla’s decision to channel his roots into his music, and thank god for that. His innovations in what would become Nuevo Tango brought the sound of the nightclubs and bars of his home of Buenos Aires to concert halls across the world.

The Piazzolla repertoire is played with verve and brio, all its earthly qualities laid before us. Mikhail Veselov manages to draw whines and whimpers out of his cello like a lonely barfly while Anna Williams makes her violin croak like a taunting güiro. Piazzolla’s “Four Seasons of Buenos Aires” are so apart from other interpretations. Winter is all brooding melancholy while the Summer is wine-soaked intensity, all of these tunes could well be played in a seedy bar in the streets of Buenos Aires.

In keeping with the theme of home, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s “Five Negro Melodies” sees the mixed-race British composer connect with his black roots through orchestrations of African-American folk melodies. It’s gorgeous stuff, full of longing and joy in equal measure, especially when Williams’ violin playing edges ever so near to fiddle work. American composer Jennifer Higdon’s memories of Colorado and playing with her grandfather as a child colour the evening with nostalgia in the UK premiere of “A Vast Palette”. Its first movement is all romance and lush tones recalling mountainous forests, while the second movement “Zesty Orange” — inspired by her grandfather’s habit of lighting the oily secretions of an orange rind on fire — is a playful wonder. Eri Nakamura’s playing is like a giddy, chugging engine keeping a delightful, minimalist bounce to the work. 

What really brings the whole night together is the genius addition of tango dancers to breathe life into Piazzolla’s score. Tango Movement, a duo made up of David and Kim Benitez, are a lesson in restrained passion. His arm barely grazes the small of her back, she rarely if ever meets his eyes as they dance. Their legs weave and intertwine, they glide across the stage as if on ice, taught and tense like an archer ready to release his arrow. The dance brings to the fore the sensuality and tension of Piazzolla’s tangos; you almost feel a little voyeuristic for watching so intently. 

This show was part of King’s Place’s Memory Unwrapped – more info here

REVIEW: NT Live’s Hamlet

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Rating: 3 out of 5.

NT Live’s latest stream brings us an energetic but imbalanced Hamlet

Hamlet, by title alone, brings an expectation to the mind. Melodramatic twists, the poetic verse we had to learn by rote in secondary school, and a master at the helm in the title role. To bag Hamlet is to fight with the heavyweights. In Autumn of 2025 the challenge lay in the hands of Hiran Abeysekera, an emerging darling of the West End. What set his challenge apart wasn’t just convincing the audiences of the Lyttelton Theatre night after night, but also audiences in cinemas across Britain. His now immortalised Hamlet will beam to audiences through NT Live.

The production, directed by Robert Hastie, does away with Elizabethan stuffiness. We instead find ourselves in the flash ballroom of a modern, Uniqlo-wearing Danish monarchy, darkened by an emo prince with black nail polish. Abeysekera, an actor full of vitality, adopts a sort of fleabaggy persona in his Hamlet. The slings and woes he’s subjected to often goad a flash of his wide eyes to the crowd. At first we’re in on the joke, but with time we’re complicit to his downfall, the vacant space he fixates on. 

Hamlet isn’t the easiest role to pull off, few are able to grapple with the volatility of the melancholic prince. His frequent insults and outbursts, followed by hushed soliloquies require a certain pliability and athleticism which Abeysekara has in spades. His energy, however, is sometimes his downfall. There’s little time to contemplate and breathe, the line between sanity and lucidity (under Hastie’s direction) becomes, on occasion, burdened by the blur. Accordingly, Abeysekera’s prince swings through emotions like there’s no tomorrow. It’s impressive, but never really lets us peek beneath the interior. 

He meets his match in a spitfire Ophelia played by Francesca Mills. She churns about the stage with a giddy propulsion, chomping at the bit to be rid of the mores and expectations of the court. Ayesha Dharker is equally dynamic as Queen Gertrude, unafraid to tear into her boy when he’s out of order — he’s definitely his mother’s son. Part of Hamlet’s strength relies on the tension in court, but the imbalance of humours at play dampens the action. Alistair Petrie’s Claudius only gives us glimpses of his villainy while Tessa Wong, who makes a strong start, ends up an increasingly directionless Horatio.

It’s hard to fault the performers when it feels like there is a misunderstanding of the intention of the text. Hamlet, though melodramatic and soapy, isn’t a laugh-a-minute riot. At times it feels that Hastie doesn’t fully grasp what tone or emotion he is trying to express in this production. The frequent beats to the audience and quirky stage directions serve only to dilute the action, and the action, when actually permitted to run its course, is compelling. There are some light-hearted highlights: Joe Bolland is himbo perfection as an especially preppy Guildenstern, and there’s a glorious send up of Jamie Lloyd and Ivo Van Hove in the iconic play-within-a-play.

All that being said, the production really works on screen. Ben Stones’ set serves almost like a sound stage, giving us an ample view of all the action. We really do get a front-row view of each of Hiran Abeysekera’s subtleties, each discerning brow or teary gaze. The Danish prince within touching distance. 

Hamlet will be released in cinemas on 22 January 2026 and audiences can find their nearest screening at NTLive.com. 

REVIEW: Are You There, Nancy Reagan?

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Rating: 3 out of 5.

“A witty but disjointed look at female friendship.”

If I was on Sex and the City I would be Charlotte. Specifically pre-9/11 when she was cross-dressing for hookups and posing nude for artists, before they turned her from a romantic to a prude. I find myself meditating on this following Are You There, Nancy Reagan?. A play from the collective Poisoned Well Productions, made up of East 15 graduates and North American theatrical creatives based in London. Written by Emma Freund and directed by Catherine Meiss, the play is a comical analysis of womanhood and female friendship in the 21st century. Narrated by Audrey Parry, we focus on a group of four friends who have gathered together for an annual slumber party. 

The central quartet is composed of that exact blend of distinctive, and perhaps relatable, characters. You’ve got the non-confrontational one, the spiritual one, the businesswoman, and the straight-talker. The group are totally believable as a gang of long-term pals, flopped onto each other like blankets and taking the piss out of one another. But there is a sense that this group has grown apart, that the glue is beginning to wear off. These are four women with very little in common. This all comes to a head when they really grill each other over what attitudes and personality flaws disgust them most within the group. Oftentimes, though there are a lot of laughs in the text, the comments they snipe at each other aren’t funny, they’re quite uncomfortable to hear. This is a fractured sorority. 

The clash between these ladies serves Freund’s dissection of pop culture’s obsession with female friendship nicely. We are ordered by Parry to pick which one we relate to most. Which of these girls is the Samantha? Are they giving Girls or Derry Girls? Who jokes like Phoebe? Who dresses like Rachel? Who stresses like Monica? We may try, out of habit, to assign a role to each of the women, and they do largely fit into their niche. What’s different here is the often-referred-to presence of feminist critique. The ladies, painfully aware of the flaws of each other, live in an age of heightened media consumption and Reductress articles. They watch the bachelor and read Audre Lorde. They contain multitudes. In weaker hands this dichotomy could weigh down the whole piece, but Freund always manages to keep us laughing while looking at some very pertinent philosophical elements. She strikes the balance. 

I must note here that I’m about to divulge a spoiler to the plot, but I think it’s an important one to divulge since I found it to be a major hindrance to the play. Parry, as it turns out, is not just a narrator to the underlying tensions at play in the slumber party, they are also the ghost of the friend whose birthday the slumber party commemorates. We learn through flashback that they were suicidal, and that in the present their friends still grapple with this loss. While touching at points — there is a beautifully poetic, eloquently delivered monologue from Parry after the shoe drops — altogether, it feels like a major curveball, a rather clunky one at that. Aside from the troublesomeness that comes with the Dead (by suicide) All Along trope, it only serves to distract from the momentum that the ensemble had built up to that point. A left-field turn doesn’t always bring the profundity you want.

REVIEW: Landscape

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Rating: 4 out of 5.

A provoking examination of the erotic and voyeuristic

Martha Graham, at the advent of opening her company to men, was plagued by an issue among her new hires: vagina envy. Graham had, for years, coached her dancers ewith uterine terminology, causing discontent for the men. If anyone is to carry on that fine tradition of “dance from the vagina” as Martha put it, it just might be Elena Antoniou. The Cypriot dancer brings her solo work Landscape to close the international festival Dance Umbrella with a takeover of the Shoreditch Town Hall. Using a vernacular that’s highly sexual, it promises to be a solo that ‘dares us to watch’, playing with our ideas of observation and objectification.

We enter to Antoniou raised high above the ground on a platform in the centre of the space. Audience members are free to roam, stand, and sit anywhere in the space to get a look. Antoniou takes us all in, her arms floating as if full of air. She begins to lock eyes with her audience — she has a very authoritative stare. We get the impression that Antoniou is some sort of untouchable queen bee, or a glittering, free sexual being, proudly flaunting her stuff to the gawking onlookers as she humps the floor and spreads her legs. 

The act of observation isn’t just between the viewer and Antoniou, but between the audience members too. Though there’s some haze and low lighting, a lot of the other audience members are still within clear view. You really notice the movement of the herd — when one person changes position it almost always triggers a ripple effect of repositioning among the audience. When Antoniou hits a new position many viewers, including myself, take out their phone to record her next act of exertion — Antonio’s allows her performance to be filmed and photographed. Sometimes our attention is drawn too to individuals that Antoniou singles out. (There was also a child there for some reason).

This absolute obliteration of the fourth wall makes Antoniou all the more compelling. At first it is as if she is trying to lure us in intentionally, later it feels as if she is some sort of caged animal that poses for our entertainment, further still and she begins to look at us like one would curiously admire a fish tank. Antoniou’s expression glides between sultry and quizzical, angry and apathetic. The piece continues. Antoniou paces her small domain with an increasing impatience. She slams her fist into the ground, wallops her pleasers against the hard surface. Cracks begin to show little by little. With her pelvis jutted out and legs splayed she very slowly recoils, her expression drops as if a little embarrassed.

The element of vulnerability is what really makes this work magnetic. There is certainly a level of novelty in the format, and the hazy lighting and sparse, bassy score create an icy vibe. But Antoniou, as an object on display, strikes a nerve in whoever watches her. You want desperately for her to be able to speak. Instead she continues to slink about her stage and perform. She stares defiantly in my direction, it feels as if we lock eyes. Standing tall, but weighed by melancholy, she stamps her left foot into the ground again and again, barking some sort of command or insult, perhaps crying out for help. She stamps and stamps. The house lights come up and people begin to slowly file out, a few of us stay. She continues to stamp as her face becomes weighted with a sort of grief, as if she can no longer bear us to see her like this. 

Though initially neutral and distant in its style, Landscape is a work that casts you under a spell. It may even have you not wanting to leave at all. A highly compelling solo work that is a marked standout in Dance Umbrella’s programme.

REVIEW: Gesualdo Passione

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Rating: 2.5 out of 5.

Sonically divine but lacking in passion

The international dance festival Dance Umbrella continues its tour in venues across London. This time they’re hitting up the concert hall of the Barbican Centre with a fusion of song and dance in Gesualdo Passione, a collaboration between Les Arts Florissants and Compagnie Amala Dianor. 

Musically it is a real work of beauty. Carlo Gesualdo’s haunting acapella work for six voices, with all its lonesomeness and tenderness, is remarkably sung in the very capable hands of Les Arts Florissants under the direction of Paul Agnew. Gesualdo’s score, which blends the monastic and ancient with his chromatic ingenuity, is contemplative, even a little detached in its meditation. The singers however find warmth and humanity, melting through the lilting melodies.

This is, however, a dance festival, and I am primarily concerned with the dance elements of the work — sadly this is where things begin to falter. It is my first encounter with Amala Dianor’s work, who is known for blending street styles with classical and contemporary vocabularies. This works exceedingly well in certain pockets, particularly when danced by Dexter Bravo and the very strong Clément Nikiema (Judas), whose agitated krumping brilliantly captures the agitating spirit of the man who would betray Jesus. 

Les Arts Florissants & Amala Dianor Company- Gesualdo Passione presented with Dance Umbrella In the Barbican Hall on Thursday 16 Oct. 2025 Photo Mark Allan

But largely the movement is uninteresting. The vocal ensemble look especially uninitiated and uncomfortable in Dianor’s choreography, and there is a fairly stark segregation between them and the dancers. Consequently the four dancers feel a bit lost at sea during most of the action, dancing away while the six vocalists randomly walk with gusto. The vocalists pace and wander a lot, as well as point accusatory fingers, it is a passion play after all. 

The hip-hop dancers are excellent at hip-hop, the contemporary dancers are excellent at contemporary, but when it all comes together it all feels diluted rather than amplified. There is one exception to this where in the work’s final moments three of the four dancers, one is the fallen Christ and is laid out on the floor after doing an awful lot of crucifix arms, stamp out a rhythm to Gesualdo’s sparse score. They rip through the space with a real sense of vitality — rarely seen otherwise in this work. 

This vitality, however, comes far too late. In all, Gesualdo Passione just feels rather flat. The ensemble are seemingly in two different works, their sense of cohesion only evidenced by being dressed in the same black robes. The design element is also largely weak, with a wrinkled back cloth and a few LED bars that feel a touch too tacky for the tabernacle. The lack of solid theatrical elements fail to uplift what feels like just another run-of-the-mill retelling of the passion of Christ.

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REVIEW: Bogotá at Sadler’s Wells

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Rating: 4 out of 5.

A Gritty and Chaotic Retelling of Colombia’s History.

Kicking off the festivities of London’s Dance Umbrella Festival 2025 is a work from across the Atlantic. Bogotá, by Andrea Peña, promises to be a theatrical deep-dive into the storied chronicles of Colombia’s past, pre and post contact with the Europeans.

The work sits somewhere between a historical analysis of Latin American history and an FKA twigs concert — the scaffolding definitely has some streaks of eusexua. This industrial aesthetic is particularly arresting in the beginning of the work. The theatre is filled with the sounds of the forest and distant indigenous pipes, a thick mist blankets the trepidatious bodies of the semi-nude dancers, a recreation of the natural past in our metallic present. Before the dancing begins a voiceover from Peña recognises the ancestral lands that this work will transport us to, as well as calling on the spirits of the ancestors to guide us through the work — her grandfather is Indigenous Colombian. Land acknowledgments, which are largely not practiced in Europe, serve to centre the past and present voices of the colonised, immediately framing this work within that still ambiguous definition of the ‘post-colonial’.

The soundscape becomes increasingly futuristic, with electronic drones and bass lines buzzsawing through the serenity of the Amazonian birdsong. The dancers begin to undulate with a fleshy muscularity, they melt into clamboring duets and drag each other about the floor in their g-strings and jockstraps. There’s a conflict within the bodies of the dancers: alternating between a sinewy tension and a liberated release. The dancers become a moving frescoe of bodies as monastic chanting enters the mix, perhaps alluding to the first Christian missionaries to the ‘new world’. Their faces become etched with contorted grins and grimaces as they begin to laugh and wail. 

There’s more full-bodied phrasing as the work continues, dancers sweat it out under glaring halogen spotlights, they square up with shadow boxing, and sprint laps of the space. This Bauschian interest in laborious movement and repetition can sometimes render the tension that Peña builds slack, especially within a runtime of 80 minutes. But there’s some really effective imagery in the work, particularly in one scene where a figure of Western machismo, dressed as a skimpy torero, smashes a piñata under the watch of a trembling Christ figure, leaving Peña herself to descend to the stage and wipe the papery rubble with a Colombian flag, her ode to the cleaning ladies earning their keep for their first-generation children. To some these images may seem on the nose, but the punkiness of Bogotá, as well as its proclivity for the ambiguous, keeps things compelling rather than blatant.

There is no doubt here that Andrea Peña has an eye for aesthetics with her hulking union of the architectural, the sonic, and the somatic. Like her compatriot forefathers there’s a touch of magical-realism within her style. Though not always gripping in its movement and transgression, Bogotá serves as a punchy mission statement from a choreographer who is happy to leave the audience with more questions than answers.

REVIEW: What a Gay Day

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Rating: 4 out of 5.

Luke Adamson charms as the campy icon of British comedy

Larry Grayson. A name sure to incite looks of delight in some or a blank stare of unfamiliarity in others. He was a lauded raconteur and entertainer of the twentieth-century British entertainment circuit, known for his bawdy innuendos and quick wit. One of a few gay figures in the cultural mainstream, Grayson has largely been forgotten over the decades. Writer Tim Connery and director Alex Donald want to see that changed with their new one-man comedy What a Gay Day! – The Larry Grayson Story, a charming insight into the life and times of the late comedian. 

The action takes place in a liminal space. Grayson is summoned by a medium in order to recount his story and reach new audiences — the showboater — before heading back into the afterlife. What follows is 80 minutes of stand up, songs, and anecdotes that have us grinning the whole time. 

Despite being the youngest in the theatre by about a generation (or two), you don’t need a working knowledge of seventies Britain to keep up with the antics. There are of course more than a few chuckles of familiarity from the audience at the mention of variety hours, celebs of the past, and The Generation Game, which made Grayson a household name. At one point Grayson dubs the time as a golden age of television, a woman nods in fervent agreement. I guess you just had to be there. 

Luke Adamson’s flourished air is compelling, he practically floats about on stage, raising his arms like a featherweight showgirl. Adamson slips on the mask of Grayson’s iconic pouting lips with an intuitive speed, he is seemingly fluent in all the limp affectations. He runs the gamut of characterisations throughout the night: one second he is a smarmy youthful showman, the next a disapproving teacher, the next Grayson at his full powers during his tight ten. What keeps us afloat during the unspooling biography are frequent breaks to Grayson at his stand up sets. He piles on layers of innuendo with the utmost dexterity. He gabs about his ‘friends’ Everard and Slack Alice with a captivating bitchiness, though we’re none the better for lapping up every sordid detail. This room for laughter and breath keeps things chugging along nicely, but also stops us from getting bogged down by the usual biography piece slump — there’s always the weight of a female relative’s death isn’t there?

What a Gay Day may not be immune to the occasional slump in the action, yet the charm and tenacity of Luke Adamson keeps us hooked. In his hands the work is elevated from fringey one-hander to a masterclass in comedic timing and camp with a lot of heart. What a gay day indeed.

REVIEW: Bog Body

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Rating: 4 out of 5.

Olivia Cordell brings the fear factor to a museum lecture gone horribly wrong

When I was a child holidaying up to the West of Ireland every summer, I heard plenty about bogs. They were a source of fuel for impoverished rural families for generations, as well as a treasure trove of forgotten gems of ancient Irish history (mostly old butter and chalices), the bog is a place of mystery. What beguiled me most of all were the notorious bog bodies, the mummified remains of humans found across Northern Europe. Most of them featuring the same injuries from blunt force trauma, strangulation, and perhaps most haunting of all, signs of self-defence. 

These beguiling remains serve as inspiration for writer and actor Olivia Cordell in the one-woman work Bog Body, playing as part of the Camden Fringe at the Baron’s Court Theatre. Directed by Emily Hawkins, we’re promised some chills, thrills, and laughs.

The theatre space is a suitably dark cavern. We enter to a looping ambient track set on haunted house mode. It wouldn’t surprise me if someone died here of consumption in the 1800s. The action of Bog Body however sees us in the lecture hall of ‘The Museum’. The venue is packed with people all wanting a glimpse of the infamous Kilgarvan Woman, an Irish bog body that has made headlines for carrying a supposed curse. We’re promised some spooks in the piece, but surprisingly it’s Cordell’s awkwardness that draws us into its world — lulling us into a false sense of security. 

As we dip into the horror elements the literary tropes begin to sneak in — eerie voices haunt Dr. Kim with nihilistic taunts. However it’s the buildup of anxiety before things kick off that gets our palms sweating. Projectors stop working, rumours of a curse are addressed, the lights falter. All the while the body itself is lying under a white sheet on the stage, an ever present threat. We know that things are not going to get any easier for our nerdy hero. There’s humour in the inevitability of the oncoming haunting. Unfortunately the pay-off doesn’t quite meet the anticipation, some clunky lighting cues and hammy ‘possession’ dialogue interfere with the flow. Though technical issues, as we were told later, were an issue during the performance. 

Aside from the horror aspects the play’s focus on exhumation makes for some pretty interesting metaphor building, in fact a lot of the text is well-crafted, at least it feels that way in the hands of the nervously charming Cordell as the flappable Dr. Alyssa Kim. She manages to attach themes of patriarchy, remembrance, and societal structures to the marks and scars on our body with a zeal one would surely only find in the most dedicated of forensic anthropologists. Cordell’s clever writing and charismatic delivery show a great deal of promise. Let’s hope the ghosts of the bogs don’t get her before we get to see what’s next.

REVIEW: The Joystick and The Reins

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Rating: 4 out of 5.

Eve Stainton’s unhurried study of surveillance and suppression is brutally hypnotic.

The Joystick and The Reins is a new, mostly solo work from Mancunian performance artist Eve Stainton premiering at Bold Tendencies in Peckham. The arts centre’s unique architecture as a converted multi-storey car park provides the perfect location for a work that seeks to investigate authoritarianism and the construction of threat. 

Stainton moves at an immensely slow pace. They melt between various anguished positions: pointing a finger derisively, pumping fists in the air like a football ultra, cowering into the floor. It’s deceptive in its simplicity, but demanding on the body. Each tremble and twitch grows wearier through the hour long meditation.

A heavy tension pervades the work with a live rendition of Ennio Morricone’s dread-filled score for the 1981 body horror classic The Thing, courtesy of the Sinfonia Smith Square. This union of leaden movement and eery music makes for a rather stifling and uncomfortable viewing experience — particularly during a clammy heatwave. Over the course of the hour Stainton is increasingly weighed down by urban detritus and objects of surveillance. An empty jerry can is attached to a conference phone wire belt around the waist. They carry around a tyre while a CCTV camera is duct-taped onto their wrist. The plants in the audience are totally pedestrian, almost humdrum in their manner, as they burden Stainton with more weight.

In a time when protest in Britain is becoming increasingly fraught — one only needs to see the Tory and Labour governments’ successive attempts to clamp down on ‘disruptive’ protest — The Joystick and The Reins feels hotly relevant. It is a work that finds itself in the wake of what has been a year of protest, with the rise of right-wing nationalist demonstrations across the UK and the arrest of hundreds of protestors in support of the now proscribed Palestine Action. London saw its largest ever demonstration in support of Trans rights only a month ago. The city’s deep ties to protest and government surveillance serves as a figurative and literal backdrop to the work; the towering skyline is in plain view from the building.

Inspired by Crime Watch episodes and footage from riots, Stainton’s breakdown from hooliganistic boogeyman to human puddle is a compelling, gruelling watch. What really draws us in is the atmosphere: the harsh edges of the concrete space in halogen lighting, the snarl of the trains passing through Peckham Rye, Morricone’s score blending with echoing speakers from the streets. The complicity of the bystander is especially interesting. Construction workers do odd jobs and stage hands direct each other on walkie talkies in plain view of the audience, all while Stainton continues to squirm like a tortured soul in limbo. 
These slow-burn thrills contribute to the magnetism of The Joystick and The Reins. Stainton’s statuesque movement is store with a vulnerability and humanity that has us wishing for their torture to end, yet we find ourselves hypnotised by their suffering — you almost feel a little morally stained for being so hooked.

Credit: Koji Zhihang Bai

REVIEW: The Good Device at Camden’s People Theatre

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Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Helped by a strong cast but hindered by its ending, Elby Rue shows potential in this sci-fi of today.

If you could change your brain in order to make living more bearable, would you be willing to? Even if that meant relinquishing your humanity? This question is what drives a new play, still in progress, written by Elby Rue. A four-hander, presented in the black-box Camden People’s Theatre, still being performed with script in hand, it’s a heavy subject matter for the causal set-up of an in-progress sharing. The Good Device sees the development of a pioneering neuralink device that could make mental illness a thing of the past. Agnes, played by Jennifer Lim, is the mastermind behind it all.

We follow Charlie during his trial. He has been dogged by depression for years and is running out of options, getting boosted up the waiting list by his friend Lucia (played by a charming Lorraine Yu), who is interning at the company. James Jip is strong in his portrayal, showing the ebb and flow of Charlie’s journey from deep despair into manic heights. The drama concerns the efficacy of the implant, a debate of ethics between Lucia and Agnes, and how far Agnes is willing to go in pursuit of innovation.

One absolute highlight of the evening is Daniel York Loh as Felix, an eccentric patient with an inclination for playing dress-up, often goading Jamie into challenging his perceptions of what it means to be successful or content — to be effective as a human. York Loh, despite being on book, is fully fleshed out and present in his physicality. Not only does he provide a much needed levity to the action, he channels the animal humanity lurking within Agnes’ subjects. Agnes meanwhile symbolises the capitalistic and scientific, she’s jaded and often acting as a frosty, logical foil to the characters around her, only being humanised at the eleventh hour — perhaps needing some of that animal humanity.

The work is certainly touching on something pertinent here. In 2021, figures estimated that one in five Americans were on antidepressants. Mental illness is a rising concern among younger generations. It’s also an incredibly profitable situation for the increasingly profit-driven pharmaceutical industry. The Good Device may not necessarily endeavour to be a political, Brechtian piece, but it certainly leaves us contemplating what is integral to being human, and whether one should be granted the right to change it for the right price. It needs some work in terms of maintaining dramatic tension, and perhaps a rejigging of a Hallmark ending that oversimplifies the consequence of playing god. That being said, it remains a promising work from a promising writer.