Creator: Ocean Hester Stefan Chillingworth, with Craig Hambling and Tim Bromage
Blood Show is a wordless piece of contemporary theatre that plays with fake blood, stage violence, and repetition. It opens with a stunning yet playful scene: crisply white carpets, costume, and furniture; a fake tree; Craig Hambling in white make-up; an elaborate ghost costume (with Tim Bromage inside); and every millimetre of Ocean Hester Stefan Chillingworth’s skin coated in fake blood. Violence seems inevitable, and when it arrives, we see it over and over from every angle.
The beauty of Blood Show is in the coming together of opposites that begs for the audience to ascribe meaning, and yet meaning is never dictated. In fact, it’s rarely even suggested. But this desperate need for interpretation instils in the audience a keen attention, a constant searching for patterns and interpretation. Given the keenness of the venue to give the audience ponchos on entry, tension is high throughout, with a constant fear of being caught in the splash zone. Given the quantity of blood in the piece, the likelihood is high. Dark clothing is recommended.
Chillingworth has created a liminal space in Battersea Arts Centre’s Members Bar where what’s inside is on the outside, what’s maudlin is humorous, what’s violent is loving, and where secret stagecraft is laid bare. Naomi Kuyck-Cohen and Joshua Gadsby’s set is ingenious in hiding blood in unexpected places, and each reveal elicits laughter. Similarly, the immaculate professionalism of Craig Hambling’s fight direction is set against the cheeky use of plastic cups to make the sounds of broken bones.
Whether a given passage of Blood Show is serious or playful, the movement is always precise and intentional in creating its mood. Bromage’s music composition and arrangement are haunting, and Bromage’s performance as the ghost is, ironically, beautifully alive.
It would be a fool’s errand to try to set a given interpretation in stone, but Blood Show leaves one pondering the meanings of violence, our insides and our outsides, resentment and forgiveness, growing up, and how we can live with the dead. Its images are captivating, whether they’re in stillness or in flux. Even when the stark contrast between white and red has been overrun by the litres of blood, these images retain their power. Despite the bloodiness, and likely because of the moments of levity in each performance, the audience is never horrified. The creative team behind Blood Show have a finely honed awareness of how to captivate and hold an audience without sending them running to the sick bucket.
Blood Show will not be for every theatregoer, but for those who like their art with sparse meaning and stunning images, this is a fantastic example of the fuzzy border between performance art and theatre.
Runs until 23 November 2024
The Reviews Hub Score
Bloody lovely
