Status is the second in a planned trilogy of performance pieces written and performed by Mancunian Chris Thorpe ‘examining the intersection between our individual humanity and our politics’. The first piece ‘Confirmation’ won an Edinburgh Fringe First in 2014 and Chris once again has worked with acclaimed American Tony Award winning director Rachel Chavkin on this one man show ‘with songs’. The Status production credits are no less impressive with an international sound, set, video production and lighting team and German dramaturg Jorg Vorhaben. The result is a sound and visual feast of lighting and activity that gives Thorpe a full workout on stage. This is so much more than a one man show. The backdrop is a huge whiteboard that appears fluid with projected moving images representing place and beat and rhythm to emphasise each story and performance element. Motivated by Theresa May’s 2016 Tory party conference quotation ‘If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere’, Thorpe slips easily in and out of character as he explores the idea and possible impact of rescinding his British passport in order to escape his cultural and national identity.
‘This is not a Brexit piece’, he states and indeed it is so much more than that. The audience is taken from London to places real and imagined around the world, with the aid of video projection, including 1990s Serbia to Colorado and the wisdom of the Navaho people to modern day Singapore in a ‘globe-spanning journey of attempted escape’. The main character ‘Chris’ examines nationalism through his experiences past and present with people and characters he meets and scenes of injustice that he witnesses all through the eyes of a British subject.
There are some hard facts and disturbing elements as he deals with army militia attacking civilians, refugee drownings and the impact of belonging nowhere. Spoken-word songs, with a distinctly Northern sound, accompanied by an electric guitar punctuate his rhetoric effectively emphasising the points with passion. The songs also provide light and shade in a stunning performance that never loses pace. Thorpe is an acting force to be reckoned with, gaining every nuance from his physicality on stage from a flick of a hand to his menacing soldier face. Vorhaben’s influence is clear where ‘the script becomes just one element’ of the performance but you have to give Thorpe credit for the powerful writing in this 80-minute piece. Thorpe takes the analogy of national and cultural identity to the physical extreme of a body organ that can only be cut out. It’s a call for a divided world to acknowledge and learn from the sins of the past and open their eyes to the world-wide rise in extremism.
Thought-provoking and timely, ultimately the audience is left with more questions than answers as Status forces you to examine your own beliefs in a culturally divided world that is fast becoming physically divided with more walls and barriers being constructed than torn down.
Reviewer - Barbara Sherlock
on - 30/3/19
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