'The Big Sad' is the creation of Sass Holmes, Keenan Groom and Alexi Papadopoulos for Liquid Eagle Productions, and these three brought together staff from all areas of The Lowry Theatre to create a series of short scenes exploring psyche and the effect stressful Christmas celebrations can have on one's well being and relationships with others.
The audience entered the studio to a lively Christmas party in full swing, a bare stage apart from dining table and chairs, sideboard, armchair and bunting effectively denoting a homely living room. The performers all milled around and various members of the audience were dragged up on stage and invited to join the party, eat nibbles and interact with characters. It was great fun, I was dragged up twice and personally felt absorbed into the world of the piece, engaged and excited to begin.
Groom's character Alf addressed the audience, with the style and energy of a comedian or modern Vaudeville act, Alf gets the audience to join in cheering and exploding party-poppers all together. The smell of party-poppers and electric energy is infectious and almost manic, it is later masterfully contrasted by Papadopoulous' character Claude, in his embarrassing failure to conjure the same engaging audience banter, a great demonstration of playing with audience expectations and crowd control, they take the audience on a well-controlled ride.
Alf and Claude are recurring characters that give a structure to the scenes we see throughout the show. During the show we see Alf go from loud and extrovert to quieter and quieter as his mental state deteriorates. A dramatic change well performed by Groom; there is an unnerving quality to his change in demeanor.
There were nine different scenes in 'The Big Sad', my personal favourites were; 'A Claustrophobic Christmas' choreographed by Emily Tandy, for its magnetic quality between performers Allegra Jeffreys and Papadopoulos, the quality of control in their responses to each other's movements was enthralling, two very attuned performers they had the audience totally engaged with them. Also 'Tony's Ill-Timed Christmas Adventure' written by Paul Holliday. In this piece performed by Stephanie Locke and Paul Holliday, Locke performs several physically comical characters and delivered an emotional scene about terminal illness, a turbulent piece. Holliday's emotional outburst at the climax of the story was heart-wrenchingly believable.
Actors Jason Johns and Gemma Davies gave separate monologues, equally entertaining, both were strong performances and each actor held the audience's attention and delivered their speeches with clear resonating voices.
Sass Holmes courageously stood still for the entirety of the performance dressed as a Christmas tree! Stood at the back of the stage from before the start, I knew it was coming but still jumped with surprise when the tree sprang into life. Holmes gave a monologue about being synthetic but also bringing a real feeling of joy to such a turbulent holiday. It felt as though maybe a conclusion was not presented to round off the piece as a whole, but this would be a good conversation-starter about mental health issues and as such perhaps I now feel this was a good choice.
'The Big Sad' gets a thumbs up from me and I hope in the future there will be more shows by Liquid Eagle Productions, obviously they are very talented at managing large ensemble groups and giving individuals a place to shine as performers.
Reviewer - Kerry Ely
on - 2/3/20
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