Writer and Director: Jingle Yuxin Jiang
The best thing about this absurdist hour is the handmade costumes designed by Freya Yuejie Li. There are pigeons, their feathers and faces made up of what appears to be rubbish and scraps. There is a lettuce with solemn, detachable leaves; a rice cooker, big enough for an actor to inhabit; and at the end, a kind of spaceship with the eyes of a fly enters for its own applause. It’s such a shame, then, that the skits in which these stellar designs appear are overlong and not that funny.
A long preamble tells the audience that we are in the future and in outer space, the Earth no longer spinning on its axis. A spaceship sends down a probe to discover what life was once like on the now dead planet. Its results are wrong, but it’s understandable why, given the relics that remain on the planet’s surface, especially as the probe has landed in London.
The city was once full of pigeons and yellow price discount stickers, and in a reenactment of what life looked like on Earth, XueQing and Shane Cleminson come in on stage dressed as pigeons with a bag full of yellow price drops. They coo and they strut convincingly, but for 10 minutes, their section goes on interminably.
In response to the great quantities of sugar found on the Earth’s surface, Karina Xuehan Jiang must pretend that she is a doughnut, but after she eats herself, unable to resist her own coating of sugar, it’s unclear who or what she becomes after. Again, her piece goes on for far too long.
XueQing returns as a sad lettuce stuck in the back of a fridge, and yet there is no allusion to Liz Truss’s nemesis. XueQing cuts a tragic, lonely figure, but it’s unclear what we are meant to take from her performance. Writer and director Jingle Yuxin Jiang comes on as a rice cooker, exalting in her immortality while Lumia teaches the audience a new language, her bear head now on the front row.
The only skit that has true promise is the choreographed scene on the tube, but there is no link to the probe’s mishearing of the announcement “See It, Say It, Sorted” as “See it, Say It, Salted”. All the actors become recognisable tropes on the Underground, although they may want to cut out the people begging for money.
The cast and crew of Nomereach Theatre appear to be an inventive and affable bunch, but their version of the absurd may be too ponderous for many.
Runs until 24 August 2025
Camden Fringe runs until 24 August 2025
The Reviews Hub Star Rating