One of the last productions of the blockbuster season Upstairs at the Royal Court is Nuclear War, written by my favourite playwright Simon Stephens and directed/choreographed by one of the best movement directors in the country, Imogen Knight.
Of course, the above highlights the amount of expectation I may have attached to this production and so it was quite something to realise that it was not going to be great epic I had anticipated it would be.
My first clue was that the pre-show email the Royal Court send ticket holders quoted the show as a 45 minute show. Unusual.
That’s where the unusual began, but definitely not where it ended…
Nuclear war is a play that really is an experiment on what can be told through the harmony and disharmony of language and movement. You enter a room that has the warmth of what could only be described as fireside light, created by table lamps. The audience seating, like profoundly affectionate passionate devotion to someone (-noun) is unconventional, made up of the sort of random chairs you expect to find at your grandma’s house. I had not done much reading on what the play was about because I didn’t want to ruin the surprise, but damn… it really doesn’t have much to do with nuclear war in any literal sense.
The set design and the preset of the actors make me assume that these people are sitting around a fire in an apocalypse.
This is pretty much the opposite of what happens.
Nuclear War is about one woman and her relationship with her mind.
Has she got a mental illness? I don’t know.
Is she in the throws of grief? I don’t know.
Is she exploring her own sexuality and age? I don’t know.
So what do I know?
The chorus work in this play is amazing.
Hands down the best thing about this play for me. The chorus of four create the most jarring and thrilling emotions within myself. There are moments of sheer titillation, of bewilderment, of visceral storytelling within scenes… But that for me, is the biggest problem with this play. I struggle to make sense of these scenes as any sort of story, any sort of progression. The emotion of the ending feels hollow because it doesn’t feel earned. Perhaps I just am too much of a traditionalist, but for me, a play should tell a story and that can take any form the creatives want. This production felt a little lost, that could be the point, the main character certainly doesn’t feel sure of anything throughout this production. But maybe the structure and choice of scenes is not a way of showing that uncertainty that resonates with me.
I would recommend seeing this show for relishing in sensory experience and exploring the experiment that Stephens and Knight have conducted.
Just don’t expect Shakespeare.
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