Free, and everywhere in chains
nation did indeed show severe injury to his brain.
The six-strong cast guide us through this and similarly could not be ordinary if he tried and this show is pretty much peak extraordinary. KATE COPSTICK
Until today, 6:30pm. harrowing stories from subsequent decades, of black people who died by suicide or in police custody, includ- of research and good intentions but, ironically, she’d achieve more by trusting her character, showing rather than telling, and letting the audience work out the rest. SUSAN MANSFIELD
Until today, 6:25pm. David Oluwale, Michael Bailey, Sandra Bland and Sarah Reed.
The density of these multiple narratives is offset by a light and impressive physical element to the show, with feats of impressive athleticism and stagecraft propelling the stories along; one moment in particular which draws a gasp from the audience is when a horse is recreated by one character leaping onto another’s shoulders and cantering around the stage.
Although the staging is enjoyable, it’s hard to call the piece fun, dealing as it does with the tragic and seemingly ever-recurring intersection between racial discrimination, police brutality and mental illness, whether the latter is caused or exacerbated by rough and illegal treatment. It’s a challenging subject, but Freeman makes accessible a conversation that needs to be had.
DAVID POLLOCK
Until today, 5pm.
tain of beginning and end, the show struggled to deliver the deepest insights into causes or cures for OCD.
TIM CORNWELL
Until today, 1:45pm. Assembly George Square Theatre (Venue 17) JJJJ
Inspired by a member of his audience’s irritation at last year’s show, with a complaint that it was incomprehensible, John-luke Roberts has responded by offering up his manifesto for absurdism on a silver platter, an indulgence of the surreal for surrealism’s sake. Not all art should have to make sense, he maintains from behind his blue moustache. Serious message imparted, he then hurls himself into a dazzling display of rich and strange characterisation, each idiosyncratic creation a supposedly rejected Spice Girl, one that didn’t quite make the cut when pop mega-stardom came calling.
Ranging from Military Spice to Christmas Spice, these lend the eccentric madness a semblance of framework, allowing Roberts to take them into whatever weird direction he sees fit. Interspersed between them are a creepy old crone, pouring her cackling gossip into every ear, an apoplectic audience member protesting at the Spice theme, opining that there has to be more to the show, and a recurring set-piece in which Roberts drops to his knees to commune with God, praying for help and divesting himself of some personal baggage amid the hurly-burly. Yet that’s about the limit of the explicable. Constantly surprising with random ephemera that arrives out of seemingly nowhere, Roberts stuffs his hour full of gags and gnomic thoughts, the most striking being that his heavily trailed ending will make us laugh simply through the unveiling of a familiar object.
Constantly folding in on itself, All I Wanna Do… feels like the logical conclusion to Roberts’s recent run of clowning shows, unabashed nonsense that nevertheless fights shy of disappearing up its own fundament thanks to his energised, roaming performance and overarching desire to entertain. A significant part of its pleasure is laughing in the moment, then struggling to rationalise that response straight after. Objective achieved, I reckon. JAY RICHARDSON
Until today, 5:30pm.