Rubbernecks – La Ferola Café , London

Creators: Dominika Uçar, Hannah Gintberg-Dees and Maddie Wakeling

Director: Dominika Uçar

There’s an eerie sense of confusion from the moment you arrive for Rubbernecks. For starters, the play takes place in an actual restaurant. You’re made to wait outside until all audience members arrive, of which there are only eight per show. On entering a waiter takes your coat and bag and her colleague shows you to a table. There’s a table for each audience member with two chairs facing each other. At the very back of the restaurant is a lady in a red jumper, with her back to the audience, already seated.

Once we’re all placed, one of the waiters makes a series of declarations of what to expect: ‘I promise that tonight this candle will be lit’, ‘I promise you tonight that someone will walk through that door’, ‘I promise you tonight that one of you will stay longer than all the others’, and so on. Thus, Rubbernecks puts you into a state of excited confusion and starts its journey.

We, the audience, are part of that journey. We are bought into the narrative. We move around the space. We are moved around the space. We are spoken to and made to respond. We act out what the waitresses say. We are watching, but we’re also performing.

Rubbernecks is a story about memory and loneliness. It is inspired by three Edward Hopper paintings, Chop Suey, Automat, and his most famous piece, Nighthawks. It takes us on a journey through a woman’s life in a large sprawling city as she tries to recollect a particular evening in her life, in a restaurant. This evening is her recollection of that evening.

It’s best not to share too much of the story. Firstly, it’s too convoluted to describe effectively and secondly, being unsure of what you’re stepping into significantly adds to the overall experience. This is a performance that keeps the audience second-guessing from the outset.

Theatre like this is rare, not least because there’s no way it can be commercially viable (with just eight audience members and a cast and crew of similar numbers). But it’s also telling a story in a way that completely absorbs the audience. Unlike most immersive theatre, where you’re shadowing the characters, watching on like invisible spirits, in Rubbernecks you are part of the cast. You are helping to tell their story, and in that, it becomes more engaging, more unnerving and, ultimately, more real than a more traditional production would be.

Showing the piece in a restaurant where all the audience are separated and given their own self-contained space, really does give you a sense of the Hopper paintings: in a room with people but still alone. In that, you feel like one of Hopper’s figures. But as the action of Rubbernecks unfolds around you, you suddenly move from being within the painting to being outside and looking at it, wondering what those people are thinking and doing. Rubbernecks is a brilliantly unconventional piece of modern performance art that simply, but effectively, taps into our sense of memory, reality, self and loneliness. This is a wonderful piece that deserves to be seen.

Running until 27 April 2023