Review: FREE YOUR MIND, Aviva Studios

Few venue openings have been as much-anticipated as that of Aviva Studios. With around £100m of public funding and £35m just from the naming rights, its opening production from Factory International was announced over a year ago: Free Your Mind would be “a large-scale immersive performance based on The Matrix films” with a world-class creative team including director Danny Boyle and set designer Es Devlin.

Using the well-regarded franchise as the basis for what effectively boils down to a gargantuan dance show is a bold and intriguing choice.The first movie came out in 1999 with an aesthetic all of its own: dripping green text, natty shades, flip phones, bullet-time movements. The original film’s philosophical leanings - AI as an existential threat and the use of red pill and blue pills to signify acceptance of one reality over another - are still part of the zeitgeist a generation on. 

Most of all, though, there were the many memorable set piece scenes as handsome hacker Thomas Anderson discovers his destiny as Neo, the prophesied One who will free mankind from the machines through a series of cinematic bulletfests. There’s the balletic kung fu sparring scene with mentor Morpheus, love interest-slash-the baddest of bad ass heroines Trinity telling an Agent to “dodge this” and let’s not forget the epic lobby scene.

The film’s directors Lana and Lilly Wachowski have said that they always saw the film as a metaphor for personal transformation - they themselves transitioned in the following decade - and so it is in keeping with the original vision to see this seminal flick translated into an art form which complements its very physical nature. 

Visually, Free Your Mind is a highly impressive feat both in terms of its scale and details; there’s much to admire even before we get to sit down. Unsurprising for such a new venture, Aviva Studios is still not quite there yet in terms of organisation or infrastructure but those waiting around before the show can grab a photo with wandering actors with huge white rabbit heads or the human sculptures dotted around the entrance lobby.

The first part takes place in a standard black box theatre and Boyle is quick to introduce one of the key themes: Manchester as a metaphor for industrial transformation, technological innovation and individual endeavour. We meet a post-war Alan Turing as he talks through his work at the city’s university and on the Manchester Baby computer before we are first introduced to Neo (Corey Owens) and then a high-kicking Trinity (Nicey Belgrave) who spectacularly overcomes half a dozen cops. Dancers connected to the ceiling through long cotton umbilical-like materials represent the battery-farmed humans under machine control. A trial of the murderous robot BI66-ER is followed by a battle sequence centred around the Woman In Red - a part of the Matrix to indicate that we are in the virtual world.

A sudden command to “follow the white rabbits” leads to an interval which is frankly a conceptual and organisational mess. There are humanoid rabbits and women in red who work their way through the waiting audience but little clue of what they signify and what to do next or when. Venue signage for rooms is scarce and distant and on press night most people adopted something like Dirk Gently’s Zen navigation method, following someone who looks like they know where they are going.

It is the second half which is the most spectacular. In a truly massive room split by a traverse stage, a long bank of overhead screens provide sharp counterpoints to the dance scenes below. With most of the audience standing either side of the unfolding action, this part is a far more engaging affair.

Throughout, choreographer Kenrick “H2O” Sandy and composer Michael “Mikey J” Asante (co-founders of the Olivier Award-winning company Boy Blue) work hand-in-hand to create crunchy and stirring work which effectively evokes the film’s dark dystopia. The music veers from the spiky to the symphonic while Sandy - either behind the scenes or appearing on stage as Morpheus - marshalls a sturdy presence on the huge Aviva stages.

This is a wonderfully visual show. Devlin’s set design is minimalistic on stage but her pieces around the venue are astounding. Gareth Pugh’s fierce costumes wouldn’t look out of place on a catwalk and the sound and light design from Gareth Fry and Lucy Carter respectively make maximum use of the Aviva’s multi-million pound infrastructure.

Boyle is an inspired choice to helm Free Your Mind having already had experience converting a number of books into films like Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire and 127 Hours. He has the big live show background having been behind the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics in London. Having said that, he may be a little out of his comfort zone here: the staging sometimes lacks ambition and bite, something the original film could not be accused of, and there’s an overall lack of narrative or cohesion conceptually. Moreover, the performance is disappointingly far from being “immersive”, even in the loose definition applied to Cabaret and Guys And Dolls. 

The most egregious thing here is the writing from Sabrina Mahfouz. There are two Manchester-themed segments which open each half, the second of which is by Charlie Andrew, a 19 year film student from Manchester Metropolitan University; both are emotional and heartfelt but there is no strong connection made to the sci-fi action that follow. SImilarly, there’s no distinct sense of through line, characterisation is thin and some of what we see and hear is based on throwaway references in the source film or only explored in its associated media. The cherry-picked scenes selected don’t often make sense from a story point of view here; for example, Neo only learns kung fu in the penultimate segment before facing off against Agent Smith in the finale. The irony of using the Aviva Studios's high-tech facilities to highlight the dangers of advanced and advancing technologies is unexplored. And having a whole overlong section in 2023 pointedly decrying mobile phones and modern internet giants like Facebook and Amazon is like shooting fish in a barrel with guns, lots of guns.

Like the source film, Free Your Mind is an absolute feast for the eyeballs but it signally fails to grab the heart and mind in the same way. 

Free Your Mind continues until 5 November.

Photo credit: Tristram Kenton

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