Dido’s Bar – Dash Arts / The Factory, London

A review of Dido’s Bar, an immersive and compelling evening of music and theatre. Arriving at the Royal Docks, visitors will find themselves transported from East London’s Tate & Lyle factory to a world of epic tales and intrigues.

Dido’s Bar

There is something about the story of Aeneas that speaks to us across the millennia. Its tale of wandering, of a search for belonging, is a way of understanding and reinterpreting contemporary struggles on an individual and mass scale. So it was with a poetry evening I saw at Wilton’s a while back. And so it is with Dido’s Bar, a new show by Dash Arts which can be found at the Royal Docks and subsequently on tour.

I took Classics in high school but maybe you didn’t, so first here’s a quick recap. Aeneas is a Trojan hero, son of Prince Anchises and the goddess Venus (I had forgotten this part but it’s relevant). As Troy falls, he gathers his family and flees. He must carry his father. His wife is lost in the chaos and dies. In Virgil’s epic poem The Aeneid Aeneas leads the survivors through various wanderings and hardships to set up a new home (not without extensive difficulties) in Italy. Oh, and there is an unfortunate interlude where Aeneas loves Dido, Queen of Carthage but leaves her to pursue his destiny. It doesn’t go well: she dies.

Dido’s Bar takes the elements of this story and transposes them into a new, contemporary setting. Juno (Georgina White) and Venus (Priscille Grace) together run rival bars. One is managed by Dido (Lola May), and is welcoming and relaxed. The other is managed by Matina (Gemma Barnett) and Turnus (Tuukka Leppänen), and is the more sophisticated of the two. When weary Aeneas (Lahcen Razzougui) comes wandering, he first gets the chance to perform at Dido’s Bar (and makes a connection with Dido). But Venus has other plans for him. And fate has other plans for Dido.

A Tale That Is Personal Yet Universal

This is not merely a retelling of The Aeneid, however. There is a personal tale at the heart of it. Some years ago, director Josephine Burton met Marouf Majidi. An accomplished musician from Iran, Majidi’s own tale of flight and wandering took him to Finland via Turkey. So the elements of Dido’s Bar which are musical feel very personal, as Aeneas attempts to bring elements of his own musical traditions into his new setting and find a place of belonging. Yet at the same time this isn’t Majidi’s story. Threads of legal status, predatory employment and uncertain futures weave through the plot in in order to tell the story of many who have recently fled their homelands for Europe. What happens to Aeneas, Dido, and later on Marco has happened to so many.

A dynamic which interested me greatly was that Majidi himself was among the four band members on stage. And is in fact the composer. It was wonderful to hear him play instruments we can’t easily seek out in London, like the tar, tanbur and asalato. But I wonder what it must be like to watch from the stage as a story unfolds which both is and isn’t yours.

So the end result of this collaboration, of the mapping of old stories onto new, is a rich tapestry. Dido’s Bar is an evening of music and theatre, where gods and mortals walk amongst and interact with the audience. There are even opportunities to get up and dance. If you recall, I went to see a certain immersive theatrical production about Troy not too long ago. But this is immersive in a different way. No longer a ghost on the sidelines, here you are in the thick of it. Sit down at Dido’s Bar! Grab yourself a drink! Venus and Juno will be along to say hello shortly.

Staging An Epic

Hopefully by now I’ve built up a picture of an evening of many layers. The retelling of the epic and the personal story. An evening of music and of theatre. A set which embodies two different bars as well as being an actual bar. And all this in a converted warehouse which was part of the Tate & Lyle factory. After an initial run, Dido’s Bar will be back at the Royal Docks for their Royal Docks Originals Festival in October. It’s also on tour to Manchester, Leicester and Oxford.

As a production at the Royal Docks, it mostly works. Not every note was perfect, and at times I couldn’t quite make out the lyrics, but overall I was impressed with how good the acoustics were for an industrial space. There are some good performances in there, and nice connections between some of the actors. I’m thinking here of May and Razzougui as Dido and Aeneas. The dynamic between them worked very well, and I found the strength and poise of May’s performance particularly moving. For me the other stand-out was Leppänen as Turnus. This is not necessarily an easily role to play well, personifying as it does the rise of nationalistic xenophobia in so many European countries. But Leppänen takes to it with gusto and power and a majestic singing voice.

The international nature of the cast is a definite strength, as is the musical prowess of the band. I was also very impressed by Peter Small’s lighting design, which was highly effective in transforming the space from one bar into another. There are some elements which perhaps could be improved upon, but overall I enjoyed my evening immersed in the tale of Aeneas and Dido.

A final point: dress warm if you’re seeing it at The Factory. It can get chilly towards the end of the evening. And from my seat near the bar I had a good view of everything but Majidi himself who was behind a speaker. Get there early to have your pick of seats.

Salterton Arts Review’s rating: 3.5/5

Dido’s Bar on until 7 October and from 14-15 October in London, and on tour.