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Review: YOU ARE GOING TO DIE, VAULT Festival
A post-dramatic production that's too impenetrable for its own sake.
By: Cindy Marcolina Mar. 19, 2023
You are going to die. It's a certainty, but it's also the title of the latest play by This is Not Culturally Significant writer Adam Scott-Rowley. Performed entirely naked, You Are Going To Die is a show about everything and nothing. You can read as much or as little as you wish in it. What does it deal with? We'd love to know - we came out of it with more questions than answers. It feels like a social experiment or an impenetrable piece of performance art. It might just be simply throwing stuff at a wall to see what sticks.
Mostly, it's a series of post-dramatic vignettes of desperation led by a captivating performer. They're visceral and obscure, disjointed, but united by a sense of doom. The show is probably a commentary on societal despair, but it's so incoherent that it doesn't fulfil its own potential. It's fascinated by an idea of subversiveness that doesn't actually provide much substance.
A recurring grimace and a zany posture à la Mr Bean are the leitmotifs that run through barking fops and sick cabaret singers. Alongside co-creators Tom Morley and Joseph Prowen, Scott-Rowley laterally explores sexual kinks, mummy issues, human anguish, and masculinity. They even include a posh tirade on compassion. Or so we think. It's like the character is stuck in a circle of hell or something. You Are Going To Die would be such a cool venture, but it's ultimately too Delphic for its own sake.
The audience crack up because of it, but Scott-Rowley's nudity doesn't add anything to the material except for the opportunity for a funny gag. The production is clownishly tragic, bordering on meaningless. After a rave-like kickoff that looks straight out of Trainspotting, it's a rollercoaster of amusing confusion with a nude man in it. It's a curiosity that could be so much more.
You Are Going To Die runs at VAULT Festival until 19 March.
VAULT Festival has been left without a venue for next year. You can contribute to the #SaveVAULT campaign here.
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