Writer and Director: Tatjana Yike Yao
Unusually for a fringe production, Writer and Director Tatjana Yike Yao’s Eclipse Ballroom boasts a roster of six Chinese-origin performers, a live music band of four, and a whopping list of 24 credited creatives. In other respects, the piece, described in the show blurb as “a postmodern, immersive performance fusing physical theatre, holography, and an experimental live band”, is about as stereotypically ‘fringe’ as you will find – baffling, bordering on bonkers, ostentatiously avant-garde, and almost entirely impenetrable.
Augustina, also known as Seraphine (Peiyi Zhong), is a photographer. She lives with Raven (Theresa Hongxuan He plays her as a vacant-eyed teenager on her first ecstasy tab), also known as Leah. The two may or may not be an item: the queer subtext here, like much else in the production, feels like a complete afterthought.
At night, a ghost inhabits Raven/Leah’s body, taking her into the spiritual realm of the Eclipse Ballroom, where a host of oddball dancing, gurning, plastic and lace-clad spectres gather. Augustina/Seraphine follows her (girl)friend into the maelstrom, “where the past is the past and the future is yet to come” (hold on, isn’t that the present?). Can the living and the dead coexist? Don’t bet on it.
15 minutes in, you will give up looking for a narrative and just focus on a character’s wise advice, “where there is a feeling, just feel it”. Anticipate, amongst other pleasures, a girl with glasses carrying a clipboard, some balloon blowing, long plastic umbilical cords, invasive factory sound that almost entirely drowns out the dialogue, and some of the most intrusive, in-your-face, fourth-wall-breaking you will ever experience.
On the plus side, the band is pretty good, to their credit, the cast takes the whole shebang entirely seriously, and you may find yourself chuckling all the way home. What does it all add up to? “Indifference is the greatest contempt”, a character shouts in one of the dozen or so audible lines that pepper the hour. Ain’t that the truth.
Runs until 20 August 2025
Camden Fringe runs until 24 August 2025
