The British boozer takes on a new dimension with captivating results in Rhiannon Faith’s immersive dance meets therapy show.
The audience are seated at the heart of the action, with the Norwich Theatre Royal auditorium empty and punters arranged on bar stools and seats around a central circular bar, up on the thickly carpeted stage.
We are welcomed by landlady Sara (Turner), and introduced to the pubs regulars: dancers using their real first names but inhabiting a range of characters, and a roaming two-person Ceilidh band. Bit by bit, through a mixture of dialogue and movement, the inner lives of this rag tag bunch seep out: the man still scarred by his dad’s disappearance, the high-flyer who focuses on work to shut out her past, the young woman trying to find her place in the world.
Into this stumbles a lost – literally and metaphorically – American Donald (Hutera), who’s troubles are much less submerged: they are boiling over. It’s darkly comic and simultaneously sensitive, encouraging us to recognise the absurdity but also the humanity.
The piece is open-hearted, and as the characters talk about their emotions and experiences audience members (at least those who declined the non-participation stickers on the way in) are encouraged to share thoughts on the burdens they carry, and the things that make them happy.
They are also encouraged to join in with karaoke, pub quizzes, and a game of cuphead: there is a careful balance of light and dark here, helped by India Merrett and John Victor’s soundtrack and Bethany Gupwell’s lighting that subtly but powerfully shift the tone.
It does sometimes feel a little touchy feely for a British pub: a little in the way that Netflix’s Sex Education created some floating amalgam of a UK and US high school that could never exist, this is a locals’ drinking den that has somehow become fused with a transatlantic therapy group. It feels both familiar and alien.
The proximity of the dancers gives them nowhere to hide and there are some fantastic performances, particularly by Hutera and Shelley Eva Haden, who bring twitching raw emotion to their characters, and incredible physicality from Sam Form and Dominic Coffey.
The show is perhaps over extended, and the pure engaging and immediate spectacle of it all hides a slightly chaotic narrative – but that maybe just reflects the lack of order in some many lives. We may all have a beginning, middle, and end, but few of us plan a choreographed path through it all.
Any help or understanding we can get along the way is a welcome bonus.
Lay Down Your Burdens continues at Norwich Theatre Royal until Saturday 29 March 2025, then touring nationally.
