Theatre Reviews

“Irish choreographer Emma Martin makes her London debut with Birdboy, a solo performance bringing audiences into a frenzied, absurd and sometimes otherworldly landscape of isolation, fantasy and letting go. 

Birdboy is a trip into the chaotic and vivid inner world of someone who doesn’t fit in, with a highly physical performance by dancer Kévin Coquelard. 

This visually arresting work, Martin’s first piece for all-age audiences, incorporates her raw style of movement and theatrical magic.”

Review by Richard Lambert, 4 Stars

The new theatre is truly wonderful. A large amphi-theatre style auditorium of over 500 seats.

The centre-piece of the performance is a battered old car with a flat tyre. This machine has many tricks up its sleeve – internal disco lights, remote controlled bonnet, haze and fans in place of its engine, headlights that lip sync……Chitty Chitty Bang Bang has found a match made in heaven. It’s exciting and incredible fun!

The dancer starts atop the car wearing a bird costume. Again, not taking itself too seriously, it has a lot of tongue-in-cheek humour about it. There are also helium balloons that float around with white ghostly fabrics covering them and ribbon entrails where you’d expect to see string. They look like jelly fish but that doesn’t make sense so maybe they’re supposed to be eggs without their shells? Carefully weighted so if you pull off some of the ribbons these globes will float up and out of view. Brilliantly articulate choreography controls all this chaos.

There is an overhead projector inside the car and one part of the show gives a shadow puppet style of presentation. This might have appealed to the children in the audience but I found it too obtuse and slightly boring.

The lighting is a cluster of various fixtures from every position creating lots of varied shapes within the perfect haze inside this black box set. Changing the lighting often keeps it all dynamic.

The soundscape was incessant. Sometimes just in the background, sometimes from the car radio, sometimes from a personal portable cassette tape player. Lots and lots of effects and tracks and music and chatter and text – you name it, it was in there. The split-second synchronisation between so many lighting and sound cues was a wonder.

You might be wondering why there is so little mention of the dancing. Well, this theatrical experience didn’t go anywhere near highlighting the dancer as a dancer – his role was semi-contortion in and around the car and a ringmaster for all the magic of the technical elements. Performed brilliantly but it does make one question “is that dance”?

Coming in at 40 minutes but nobody’s ever left theatre saying “that show was too short”.

A truly technical spectacle that’s well worth watching.

Recommended for ages 7+
Photo credit: Luca Truffarelli

Directions to the venue were tricky to follow and I ended up taking a long outside route. Leaving after the performance I think I found a much easier route: come out of the underground station at the Olympic Park end and go up one flight of stairs by M&S. Enter the mall and walk to Primark. Turn left just before you get to Primark and exit by the Vue Cinema. Ahead of you is the huge orientally shaped pagoda building that’s Gordon Ramsay’s Bread restaurant. Walk along past the Bread restaurant towards the Velodrome and you’ll see the ArcelorMittal Orbit slide in the distance. The Sadler’s Well East theatre will be on your right and looks similar to the National Theatre on the Southbank.

The Venue’s hospitality is rather bougie. Entering the venue you’ll go past a small bar and coffee shop. Ahead is there new dance floor which has a few rather imposing security guards surrounding it. Turn right at the dance floor and the Box Office is on the right with the PKB (“Park Kitchen & Bar”) at the end. The food menu is strange and not very much appealed to me.

I tried the Fried Chicken and PKB Fries and a glass of red wine for £24.50
The Fried Chicken was 2 clumps. Each had the smallest amount of chicken imaginable surrounded by a largish wad of solid spicy batter. I eat one which was very disappointing and I mentioned it to the waitress. She was lovely and came back with a single clump of the same which did have a little more chicken inside but still not very nice.
I don’t know if this is run by Sadler’s Wells or an external concession but hopefully this is just teething problems for a new venue. Next time I visit I’ll use one of the food outlets on the way.