SO THAT YOU MAY GO BEYOND THE SEA – Undone Theatre / Camden People’s Theatre, London

A very personal exploration of identity, cultural appropriation and relationships, Undone Theatre‘s SO THAT YOU MAY GO BEYOND THE SEA will forever alter how you see Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. On at Camden People’s Theatre.

SO THAT YOU MAY GO BEYOND THE SEA

Have I seen theatre in the form of a thought experiment before? I’m not sure that I have.  Is it theatre? Probably, although Joey Jepps and Gabriele Uboldi are not actors.  As you can tell, SO THAT YOU MAY GO BEYOND THE SEA has got me thinking.

So back to this thought experiment, let’s start there.  It centres on Madama Butterfly, Giacomo Puccini’s 1904 opera about Cio Cio San and Pinkerton: the latter fickle and fetishising, the former tragic and forlorn.  An epic love story, but about ordinary people. Fine, some of them exoticised, but still ordinary people.  Also an increasingly contested story, one of the last spaces (at least I hope) where yellowface is deemed acceptable.  But what if it wasn’t accepted?  What if it never had been? Would casual racism towards Asian people be less frequent rather than on the rise?  Would things be different, or would they not?

As if a thought experiment were not sufficient for a running time of just under an hour, SO THAT YOU MAY GO BEYOND THE SEA is also a show within a show within a show.  The first show is Madama Butterfly.  The second is the show Jepps and Uboldi intended to make about it, exploring the relationship of Jepps’s English and Japanese parents.  The third is the show they ended up making, when the second proved to be actually rather difficult.  Difficult to make, and difficult on a relationship.

The structure of the show is as interesting as the premise.  It combines Jepps and Uboldi addressing the audience as themselves with Uboldi playing additional characters (notably Jepps’s father), recorded interviews with Jepps’s mother, and a small filmed stage set which aids our exercises in imagination.  This flexibility underpins Jepps and Uboldi’s complex, multi-faceted storytelling.

More Questions than Answers

Ultimately, though, charm is not the point.  Much as a nice bit of music is not the point when it comes to whether or not to go and see Madame Butterfly.  SO THAT YOU MAY GO BEYOND THE SEA circles a few times around a question of spectatorship and morality.  Does being a spectator make you a good person?  Is it complicity? Who gets to tell the stories, anyway, and who is told?  Jepps and Uboldi issue a call to action for their audience to rise beyond passivity.  To understand that participating in something harmful, even passively, is a choice to perpetuate it.  Not to stand by and watch those casual acts of racism without doing anything.

Jepps and Uboldi unpack a lot more thoughts and questions than they could ever resolve during this short show.  The ending comes in a bit of a rush, and doesn’t feel nicely tied up.  But this, really, is the point.  It’s a show which doesn’t shy away from the uncomfortable bits.  It shines a spotlights right on them.  If you’re into theatre which is thought-provoking and slightly unsettling, then this is a good pick for you: you’d better hurry and get yourself a ticket.

Salterton Arts Review’s rating: 3.5/5

SO THAT YOU MAY GO BEYOND THE SEA on until 4 May 2024.  More info and tickets here.