Spent + The Room of Piss + Kindliness – Voila! Theatre Festival / Barons Court Theatre, London

It’s a three-in-one theatre spectacular as we settle in at Barons Court Theatre to check out what Voila! Theatre Festival has to offer.

An Afternoon of Theatre at Barons Court

This is a new experience for the Salterton Arts Review. I’ve had very busy weeks during theatre festivals for sure. But never have I been invited to see so many things on the same day, and gone to all of them! It helps that they’re all at the same venue, and so did not overlap – I’m good, but I can’t be in multiple places at once.

This isn’t my first visit to Voila! Theatre Festival. We talked a little about it when I went to see Stampin’ in the Graveyard: it’s an established and well-curated theatre festival which, for the first time in 2024, has extended beyond the Cockpit Theatre to several venues across London. It’s on until 24 November so you still have a week to check it out: see listings here.

Unfortunately I couldn’t see everything I was invited to, but there was a fortunate coincidence of three shows all happening at Barons Court Theatre yesterday, where also fortunately the production teams agreed to this three-in-one review.

I was interested to see what seeing different shows back to back would bring: would there be synergies between them? Would each take the place of the last in my memory? Or would it just be an enriching, invigorating day of theatre? A little from the first and last columns, in the end. Being able to juxtapose different works in such quick succession helped to spark connections in my brain that might not otherwise have been there. And it was certainly an afternoon well spent. So, dear readers, I may not yet have made it to Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival, but I’ve certainly enjoyed having Voila! Theatre Festival on my doorstep and am already looking forward to the 2025 installment.

Onwards now to those three shows.

Spent – 28&2 Productions

First up was Spent.  By 28&2 Productions and written by Nikoletta Soumelidis, it charts a love story between two unnamed protagonists.  Like a few productions I’ve seen, the two actors (Soumelidis and Charlie Collinson) alternated roles during this run at Barons Court Theatre.

This can feel gimmicky, or can uncover new depths in a play.  It can also be a lot to ask of actors.  My feeling here was that it demonstrated that a shifting power dynamic in a relationship is not a gendered thing (but might have different nuances depending on gender).  But at the same time I did wonder if the strain of switching between parts inhibited the actors from fully embodying one role and making it theirs.  Without having seen it in both configurations, it’s hard to say. Particularly with Soumelidis writing as well as acting.

There is a lot to admire in Soumelidis’s writing.  It’s the type of play where what seems like a throwaway line comes into focus later.  Very clever.  Structurally it unfolds as a series of alternating scenes.  We have the beginning of a relationship, and the end.  One moves faster than the other, so when the timelines eventually collide events come to a dramatic, perhaps even star-crossed, conclusion.  I did think a slight trim might do the play good: at 90 minutes it makes its point amply, and the two alternating energies can feel wearying after a time.

Otherwise I enjoyed Spent.  The shifting power balance is well-crafted, as is the difficulty in walking away from something that was once good.  The introduction of sub and dom concepts into their love life is an interesting addition.  One character promises to know their partner’s limits better than they do themselves, while proceeding to push them far past their limits over the following years.  Like a Shakespearean tragedy the exits are well-marked and frequent, the characters just fail to avail themselves of them.

Salterton Arts Review’s rating: 3.5/5

Spent was on until 17 November only as part of Voila! Theatre Festival. Find out more about 28&2 Productions here.

The Room of Piss – Lucia Martinez

I could not have picked a more perfect interlude than The Room of Piss which, as it happened, followed hard on the heels of Spent.  It is one of the shorter works I’ve reviewed at only 20 minutes, so it might be worth doing as I did and pairing it with something else, particularly if you have a longer journey to Barons Court Theatre.

The Room of Piss, by Lucia Martinez, is a blend of physical and scripted theatre about living with chronic illness.  It draws on personal experience of PKD, or polycystic kidney disease.  The Room of Piss uses techniques from mime and clowning to get to the point straight away and create comedy from something difficult (mime and clowning excel at this).

It opens with a bit of scene-setting: the room of piss as a place of repetition and anxiety where you could end up at any time.  Reminders and imperatives like ‘Smile!’ line the walls.  Our protagonist goes through the routines of daily life, which run smoothly as long as their piss is yellow.  When one day it is blue instead, the routine is fractured and uncertainty creeps in.

It’s a neat way of evoking some of the challenges of chronic illness.  The mental load.  The physical drain.  Constant worry.  The burden of other people’s advice and enforced positivity.  The freedom of making peace with it in your own way, whatever that looks like for you. Some in the audience definitely found it moving, perhaps based on their own experience.  And everyone got into the spirit of it, having a lot of fun, whooping and cheering. The Room of Piss is simple, fun and effective. It made me want to see more 20 minute shows, more physical theatre, and more by Lucia Martinez!

Salterton Arts Review’s rating: 3.5/5

The Room of Piss on until 24 November as part of Voila! Theatre Festival. More info and tickets here.

Kindliness – Daniel Chaves

The third show of my busy Barons Court Theatre day was the hardest to categorise.  Kindliness, by David Chaves, was also probably the most ambitious.  In a bit less than 90 minutes it builds a world before tearing it down. We start in a divided place.  Malcolm (Chaves) is working on a project, a bridge to connect his people with the ones across the fence.  He hopes it will bring them together.  The divisions are deep in this community.  There is a lack of trust, deeply entrenched stereotypes about what the others are like, how they treat people like us.  Sadly we’ve all heard something along those lines before, at least in the media.  Malcolm, however, is open minded.  His affair partner Mimmi (Lucy Kean) was even born on the other side.

The mistrust is perhaps not misplaced here though, as things suddenly escalate into a war.  Malcolm is at home when it starts, with wife Amara (Fia Houston-Hamilton) and son (Victoria Chen).  When Mimmi shows up with a plan for escape, at least for Malcolm, he must choose a path.

Or so you would think.  In actual fact he passionately defends his hopes for the future until his wife gets sick of it and takes drastic action.  I wasn’t too sad about it: none of these characters are particularly likeable but the guy waxing lyrical about his son’s moral potential while said son struggles to breathe on the floor might take the cake.  And this is where I struggle to categorise the play.  I wasn’t the only one who reacted less than sympathetically to Malcolm’s death.  Is that the intention, or is it not connecting?  This is still a work in development, so either way there is scope to make that clearer.

With such a lot of drama and plot in a short space of time, Kindliness packs a lot in.  It’s unclear why the world seems contemporary with ours at times but less modern at others.  But we overlook that, as the point is the futility of division and its deep-seated nature, passed from one generation to the next. The adult roles spend a lot of time at emotional fever pitch, which combined with fairly stylised dialogue makes them challenging. Chen’s performance in the role of the child, Little Thing, is exceptionally good.  How she came to capture the essence of a six year old boy so well I don’t know.  It’s only a shame he spends the second act unconscious.

So there’s quite a bit of potential here.  With some polishing in a few areas I think it could go far.  Its message is certainly timely in this divided world.

Salterton Arts Review’s rating: 3/5

Kindliness on until 22 November as part of Voila! Theatre Festival. More info and tickets here.