Take Me Somewhere

The Last Supper

Tramway, Glasgow

Alongside work by home-grown artists, Take Me Somewhere 2025 has a strong strand of performances by international companies. Among them is MEXA, an artistic collective from São Paulo, Brazil. Formed in 2015, the group exists against a backdrop tinged with violence, poverty and homelessness – a context where coming together, being supportive, sharing experiences and channelling those into live theatre is a mechanism for survival.

But what if the collective is on the verge of splitting up? What if the group sitting at the long table on-stage is about to share a last supper before going their separate ways?  Leonardo da Vinci’s painting, The Last Supper, is the starting point for a medley of personal associations – sadly not always easy to decipher, because the spoken text is in Portuguese and some sightlines interfered with the projected captions. What does emerge is a sense of unavoidable finality. Of death being as much a presence at this supper as the individuals who rummage among their memories to tell stories which might (as in theatre itself) be real, or might be fiction.  

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Rituals and superstition brush shoulders with religion. Da Vinci’s imagery is repeatedly scrutinised – the unknown faces he painted are now ubiquitous, reproduced on church walls and commercial tat like tea towels. Will any of us be remembered? For sure, the members of the audience who share supper with the cast are unlikely to forget the cooked food and red wine they’re offered during a lively interaction that – as with much else of this show – is video’d and projected on the back wall. 

However, as in real life, not everyone gets to eat – a recurring point made by the performers, who weave instances of society’s ‘betrayal’ of needy people into the swagger and flounce of their narrative. It’s all a bit of a tease, of course. Are they really splitting up? Hmmm. Whatever we’ve shared, this moment will never come again… Remember that, as MEXA exits with a flourish (leaving a huge cake for us to guzzle!)