Theatre: Counting Sheep

Forge, The Vaults, London SE1 (020-8050 9241). Until 17 March Running time: 1hr 30mins

The words “immersive Ukrainian folk opera” don’t normally set my pulse racing, said Dominic Maxwell in The Times. But for this “little beauty” of a production, which headlines this year’s Vault Festival (in the tunnels around Waterloo station), I am “thrilled to make a big exception”. This surprising, funny, heartfelt show, which was an awardwinning smash at the Edinburgh Festival in 2016, is the creation of Canadian Mark Marczyk and his Ukrainian wife, Marichka. It tells the story of how they met and fell in love on the barricades of Maidan Square in Kiev in 2014, during the uprising that ousted the pro-russian president. But we, the audience, are part of the action throughout, led by nine performers who “sing, dance, shout, play musical chairs, mourn the dead and herd the crowd”.

“We start on benches, we’re fed, we dance, we drink, we play, we waltz together,” said Alex Wood on What’s On Stage. As the revels/revolution unfolds, vast video projections flicker with news footage, images of Vladimir Putin coming in and out of focus. All of a sudden we’re being urged to build barricades, shift sandbags and stamp in time to thumping, bassy music. “Placards soar overhead, people chant, mobile phones stream the outbursts.” It sounds contrived on paper, but in the flesh it’s powerful and enthralling; in fact, it’s everything that Nicholas Hytner’s recent promenade Julius Caesar tried to be but didn’t quite pull off.

The magic of the production lies in how it “both giddily sweeps you up in the optimistic surge of protest and damn well reminds you that these events happened”, said Andrzej Lukowski in Time Out. Yet I suspect the level of appreciation for this production very much depends on where you sit. My “premium protester” ticket (seriously) included food, vodka and a place in the heart of the action. By contrast, I sat in the cheaper “observer” seats, said Fiona Mountford in the London Evening Standard. From there we looked on in “benign then baffled bewilderment and, increasingly, boredom”. This is certainly a show full of “sound and fury”, but I’m not sure it signifies much.