“Souvenirs” – Review

Souvenirs is absolutely bonkers. I’ve said it now, it’s out there. A man gets told he’s dead by the newspaper he works for, gets narrated by an enthusiastic, cackling MC, then 15 minutes later a clown is dressing up like a fabric-y Royal. And who could possibly say they wouldn’t love to see that?

As an audience member, your journey begins the moment you walk into the Arts Centre Studio. A towering heap of cardboard boxes connects the floor to the balcony, a man sits behind you playing guitar, and a tree made of rubbish hangs opposite you, daring you to tell it that it doesn’t make any sense. You won’t. From the moment the first clown bouncily strides down the cardboard tower, to the moment an intricate machine created by the performers begins recycling wine bottles, the stories of finding treasure from trash are there for you to enjoy and interpret as you will.

The sheer ambitious scale of Souvenirs is just extraordinary: the live, looping music, the madness of the set, the monologues, playscripts, poems, the tight ensemble choreography and the clowning… and it all fits together chaotically, beautifully and yet, somehow, completely seamlessly. The performers Kitty Murdoch, Alex Welsh, Oscar Owen, Ella Tebay, Ellice Stevens and Tommy Loftus are joined onstage by Michael Chidgey’s expert musical input, making use of a variety of vocal and instrumental techniques to add to the cacophony of madness.

Much credit has to go to the writers (Ollie Higgins, Grace Holme, Max Kennedy and Alex Wallis) for their input into the performance, with each writer creating a script, monologue or poem based around a single object used in the show. The director, Sam Wightman, and Assistant Director Peter O’Brien had fantastic material to work with, and it was incredible to see how each piece of writing had its own unique theatrical style built around it. The cast would use Frantic Assembly-inspired physical choreography at one moment, and find themselves leaping around in cardboard boxes the next, with a narrator speaking the text over a microphone. At times, the narration fills in the action onstage, and at times it simply adds flavour, but there’s never any doubt that the impact is extraordinary.

Unfortunately I have almost run out of superlatives to describe this, well, superlative performance, but I do have just one more: If you’ve got a burning desire to go see a show right now, but haven’t decided which one, there couldn’t be a better choice for you than going to see Souvenirs.