There She Is – Omnibus Theatre, London

Writer: Gabriela Flarys

Directors: Gabriela Flarys and Andrea Maciel

Anybody who has ever lived or worked in London will be familiar with the disruption to one’s life that can happen when the transport network grinds to a halt. Fewer of us know what it’s like when the havoc is caused by a beached whale on the line.

In Gabriela Flarys’s one-woman piece, that is the predicament she faces: quite where the whale came from nobody knows, but it is interfering with her desire to get to “The Better Place”. That such a locale apparently exists on the Tube network is an early pointer to the surreal, fantasy world in which this one-person piece of physical theatre exists.

What follows is an odyssey through a London unlike the one we know. Flarys uses her comedic and dance skills to bring this madcap version of the capital to life. In one segment she turns the arduous task of pushing through a crowd of commuters into a comedic samba; in the next, she focuses on linguistic dexterity as she attempts to converse with the driver of the replacement bus service, with neither party used to English as their primary language.

Indeed language and its pronunciation are common themes. Whether Flarys is conjuring up a Greek fellow commuter via a parka and some remarkable puppetry work, stumbling for the right words to describe something as unique as a cetacean under a train, or describing the romantic qualities of Received Pronunciation with the same bland generalities that the British regularly ascribe to other European languages, there is an undercurrent of communication, and sometimes lack thereof, flowing through the piece.

There is a sense, too, of the feeling of alienation one can feel when adrift in somewhere that doesn’t feel like home. The London we see through Flarys’s work is unfamiliar, its structure at once navigable but also unfathomable. Flarys is never explicit about the metaphors she is using in her work, allowing the audience to embrace confusion.

But ultimately There She Is works best in its most visual moments. Whether it’s performing a solo rumba as she kisses her shoulder and elbow joints, climbing inside her giant suitcase to retreat from a ticket inspector (and, one suspects the wider world) or swimming in places where there is no water, Flarys produces a unique spectacle that is a pleasure to watch.

Continues until 3 September 2022