We Were Promised Honey! – Soho Theatre, London

A review of We Were Promised Honey!, a Soho Theatre co-commission debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe. Writer and performer Sam Ward tells the story of an audience’s future in a compelling interactive format.

We Were Promised Honey!

There’s something quite clever about Sam Ward’s show We Were Promised Honey! which leverages group psychology. The format is participatory and requires the audience’s consent at key moments in order to continue. Each time action is required the silence sits heavy on us as we wait to see who will speak to keep things going, to continue the story of us in the future.

This unusual format is closely aligned with the core premise, that’s it better to know the ending of a story than not know, even when there is no happy ending. Again it’s human psychology, human nature. To illustrate this point the hour-long show pivots around two stories, unrelated yet revealing this same truth. There is the story of the audience in the future, as I mentioned. Only it’s a very long future, stretching centuries, millennia, billions of years to the very end of time. And there’s the story of Richard Russell, a member of Horizon Air ground crew who in 2018 stole a plane and flew it before crashing into an island in Puget Sound. From the second we hear the details of the stolen flight we know it’s not going to end well for Russell. And yet we inevitably want to listen until the end.

So it is with our own story. Between the Climate Emergency, the threat of nuclear war and various other crises happening in the world, most of us don’t need Ward to tell us it’s probably not going to end well. And yet. There are stories that make this glimpsed future human. A baby born in a lighthouse. A story of love, loss and reconnection. So each time we have a choice about whether to end the evening or continue on, we choose the latter.

The Story Of Us

Despite knowing there’s no happy ending, the moments of humour and hope throughout the story lighten the mood. The storytelling format is a good choice to bring light and shade. What epic tale, after all, doesn’t foreshadow the bad while interspersing the good? The timescales make this one a little unusual, but the key elements are there. And maybe at a time of increased anxiety about the future, making it a positive choice to hear what that future holds for us is an important way to give the audience agency.

If you are like me and like your interactive theatre without any interaction from you personally, then don’t let all this talk of collective participation worry you. Because Ward consistently requires our consent, you’re not going to end up on stage if you don’t want to. And for those who do actively participate, he directs these scenes firmly and clearly so there is no chance of ‘getting it wrong’.

Other than the billions-of-years timescale and the participatory format, this is a very simple show. The advertised running time, which Ward takes very seriously, is just over an hour. It’s just Ward and the audience with a couple of props. Lighting by David Doyle and sound by Carmel Smickersgill is simple but effective. Oh, and if you’re willing, it ends in a singalong. Check out the Soho Theatre website here for tickets and theatre company YESYESNONO’s website here for future projects.

Salterton Arts Review’s rating: 3.5/5

We Were Promised Honey! on until 3 December 2022