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High anxiety: Collapse - Riverside Studios

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It’s a brave or maybe slightly provocative production to use Hammersmith Bridge on their artwork for a show called Collapse, which is about how everything collapses—poorly maintained bridges, relationships, and jobs. Nothing works. That’s probably too close to home for Hammersmith residents stuck with a magnificently listed and useless bridge on their front door. It gets even weirder when you realise the piece is staged in what looks like a meeting room with a bar. However, keeping things together in the most unlikely of circumstances is at the heart of Allison Moore's witty and engaging four-hander, which is currently having a limited engagement at Riverside Studios . The piece opens with Hannah (Emma Haines) about to get an injection from her husband (Keenan Heinzelmann). They’re struggling for a baby, and he’s struggling to get out of bed. But he managed to give her a shot of hormones before she started worrying about the rest of the day. She’s unsure she will keep her job with ...

You can’t stop the boats: Sorry We Didn’t Die At Sea @ParkTheatre


Sorry We Didn’t Die At Sea by Italian playwright Emanuele Aldrovandi and translated by Marco Young, has made a topical return to London at the Park Theatre after playing earlier this summer at the Seven Dials Playhouse. In a week when leaders and leaders in waiting were talking about illegal immigration, it seemed like a topical choice. It also has one hell of an evocative title.

The piece opens with Adriano Celantano’s Prisencolinensinainciusol, which sets the scene for what we are about to see. After all, a song about communication barriers seems perfect for a play about people trafficking and illegal immigration. One side doesn’t understand why they happen, and the other still comes regardless of the latest government announcement / slogan. 


However, the twist here is that the crossing is undertaken the other way. People are fleeing Europe instead of escaping war or poverty in Africa or the Middle East. It’s set sometime in the not-too-distant future. There is a crisis causing people to flee the reverse way. Europe is no longer inhabitable except for the extremely rich. And so we’re introduced to four characters. They have no names, only descriptions. Three characters pay the fourth to travel in a shipping container to an unknown destination. But as things go wrong, things take a darker and abstract tone.

The ensemble balances the darkness of the subject matter and the banality arising from seemingly lighter-hearted moments. As The Burly One (and smuggler), Felix Garcia Guyer addresses the audience with facts about shipping containers and Italian recipes. The staging is kept simple with a red curtain evoking the red container ship they are within. 

The overall impact is less realistic than Tess Berry Hart’s excellent CARGO at the Arcola in 2016. This piece explored similar themes about illegal immigration from a container ship. However, I suspect the point is more about getting the audience to try to understand the informal immigration trade. It isn’t a journey you can take with a wad of cash, a waterproof suitcase and a few folded shirts and expect to survive even if one of the characters tries to do that. 

There may not be a solution by the end (or a straightforward conclusion), but who can honestly believe anyone has one? Directed by Daniel Emery, Sorry We Didn’t Die At Sea is at Park Theatre until 30 September. 

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️


Production photos by Charles Flint

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