Theatre Review: Me & Robin Hood at the Spielman Theatre,Tobacco Factory Theatres, Bristol

This review was first written for British Theatre Guide

Me & Robin Hood is the second of Hoipolloi’s Loose Change trilogy examining inequality and the relative values we ascribe to life and art, while raising money for the charity Street Child United. It follows on from The Duke: Shôn Dale-Jones’s one-man tale of a porcelain family heirloom, that saw him seated at a desk, cueing up his own music and sound effects from a laptop.

For Me & Robin Hood—after his customary handshake greeting at the door—Dale-Jones appears on a stage that is empty aside from his water bottle. Yet, in this stripped-back setting, his storytelling has even more room to flourish. He needs the space to create his narrative—to imagine the front room of his childhood home in Anglesey, a football match he played for his local Llangefni under-11s team or a confrontation with a bank manager after an impromptu one-man demonstration with a placard.

Beneath his genial demeanour and charismatic wit, his personal worries about his mortgage and stress-induced skin condition, Dale-Jones is angry—about the inequality that exists in a world that accepts millions of children living on the streets and the ever-widening gulf between rich and poor stretching back to the Thatcher years. It’s time to invoke the spirit of his fictional friend Robin Hood—whom he first met in 1975, watching the six-part TV series as a seven-year-old, at home with his family and best mate.

In his eyes, Robin was a true radical, gainsaying the authority of the Sheriff of Nottingham and robbing the rich to give to the poor. If he were here today, he wouldn’t be propping up the system by helping in his local charity shop, he’d be exploding the shared myths of society, plundering banks to redistribute cash and rewriting the story of money.

Weaving fact and fantasy together so seamlessly that the audience is left guessing where one finishes and the other begins, Dale-Jones questions our commonly held perceptions of what is acceptable in society. He admits he too is complicit, a product of the boarding-school education his Thatcher-supporting greengrocer father strove to provide for him, that chafes against the social conscience of his grandmother. But his show is raising money for street children and the challenge is there for us all to do what we can.

Looping back and forth through multiple threads, Dale-Jones is such a gifted storyteller and his tale so skilfully crafted that not a moment of this 70-minute monologue sags or drags. Reaching from the 12th century to the present via his childhood exploits, Me & Robin Hood encompasses friends and family, bank managers and robberies, a run-in with the police and an idiosyncratically off-kilter course of therapy. On an empty stage, Dale-Jones pushes at the boundaries; playful, challenging and seething with ideas.

Reviewed on 2 October 2019| Images: Murdo Macleod

Theatre Review: The Gift of Presents - Spielman Theatre, Tobacco Factory Theatres, Bristol

This review was first written for British Theatre Guide

At some time during The Gift of Presents, you might reflect that, near the beginning of the show, you were offered the chance to leave. You’d already surprised Shesus at her birthday party and seen her perform some nifty Christmas-themed lip-synched routines with her two devout followers. Was this not an auspicious time to head for the exit, before things became even more disconcertingly interactive?

Though you may still wonder where it’s all heading, it’s testament to the talent of London-based trio Shesus and the Sisters that you’re glad you stayed. Part Christmas party with festive music, pass the parcel and a budget chocolate yule log, part commentary on the preoccupations and ills of today’s society both politically and personally, their energetically bonkers show has real inclusiveness and warmth.

This is the first time performing in Bristol for the company: Loose Baker, visually arresting in white robes with flowing locks as the multi-gendered drag-king Missiah Shesus, and twin sisters Lauren and Danielle Meehan as Mary Berry and Pauline Hollywood. With their red lips and brows on fleek, the two nuns may be wearing more make up than conventionally expected for their calling, but this is a party, after all.

The threesome works deceptively hard at entertaining, with fast-paced cabaret and quick-fire banter backed up by plenty of clowning. They indulge in some gleeful physical comedy, clambering about the intimate Spielman Theatre, distributing food and encouraging an assortment of mad-cap group activities.

There’s no shortage of tongue-in-cheek silliness, innuendo and off-the-cuff wit, as the audience sings along and rewrites a favourite Christmas song with more adult themes. It makes the mood-change even more startling when the performance swerves into spoken verse and the sort of fragile, heartfelt confessions that tend to come out when you’ve overindulged in the eggnog.

At times, their performance is vaguely based on a liturgical church service, though the opportunity to greet your neighbour has the potential to become something more extreme. At others, they veer towards paganism and the spirituality of rebalancing the universe and calling on the cosmos for group therapy and healing.

Perhaps it could do with a little trimming here and there, but, for all the daftness and improvised interaction, the show is underpinned by a solid structure and choreography that allows its performers to push the boundaries. Thought-provoking, entertaining and irreverent all in one, The Gift of Presents is the Mother Superior of Christmas parties and you won’t go to another quite like it.

Reviewed on 11 December 2018 | Images: Giloscope (Giles Smith)

Theatre Review: The Duke at The Spielman Theatre, Tobacco Factory Theatres, Bristol

This review was first written for British Theatre Guide

Rather than taking on an alter ego, Hoipolloi’s Shôn Dale-Jones is keen to emphasise he’s being himself in The Duke. And indeed, his hour of one-man storytelling feels very personal: a funny, heart-warming and poignant blend of real and imaginary events.

It’s a deceptively complex and contemporary tale that belies the fluency of its recounting to gnaw away at the relative values we ascribe to life and art, not only in financial but emotional terms as well. It’s also perfectly suited to the intimate space of the Tobacco Factory’s newly opened Spielman Theatre.

Shôn’s central thread is of a family heirloom, a Royal Worcester porcelain statue of the Duke of Wellington that his Dad bought as an investment in 1974 and kept under his bed, wrapped in sponge, to gradually increase in worth. After her husband’s death, while Shôn is working on a breakthrough film script, his mum calls him in disarray from Anglesey, to tell him that she’s accidentally broken The Duke.

Pushing aside a fast-approaching deadline for revisions that will tear the soul out of his script but mean his work might get financed, Shôn embarks on a mission to track down a replacement statue. But current events keep intruding into his consciousness; taking in the charity shops of his home town of Cambridge, he and his mother meet a refugee family—a mother of two young children whose husband has been left behind.

Seated at a desk, choreographing his own music and sound effects from his laptop, Shôn weaves these disparate strands together into a fantastical road trip to Anglesey. His mother, his film script and the refugee crisis all vie for his attention. You may never quite know how far real events are overtaken by inventiveness, but there’s a playful sense of which way the scales are tipping.

Though Shôn’s been touring this show since August 2016, he wasn’t the same man he was a year ago or will be in a year’s time, he says. He has the knack of drawing the world closer; alongside family, the political becomes personal, too. Sadly, the refugee crisis remains as pertinent as ever, but rather than dwell in guilt, he’s been doing something about it. Since he began, The Duke has raised nearly £50,000 for child refugees.

The Duke is an antidote to our divided times, emphasising connection and kindness. Told with charismatic wit and warmth it delivers an enduring message with the lightest of touches, that even if you can’t solve everything for everybody, it’s still possible to give what you can.

Reviewed on 30 October 2018 | Image: Brian Roberts