What the playwright heard

With any absurd, wildly fantastic or outrageous anecdote about the world beyond our experiences, it is all too easy to dismiss it as an urban myth. The three men in their make-shift lounge dance between light-hearted, ludicrous and downright disturbingly macabre tales, and it doesn’t matter whether the tales being told are true or not. The audience is absorbed and captivated by their delivery, as much as the content. In fact it just so happens that most of these anecdotes are, at least in part, true.

_What I Heard About the World _is more than just the black box studio being the modern analogue to the minstrel. The manner in which the stories are told matters as much their content. Amusing idiocy and a touch of light-hearted humour is used to defuse the grim and an air of gravitas and sincerity to disarm the hilarious and outright bizarre. With this, interest never wavers and the edge is taken off the initial reaction and with the deliberately imprecise retelling of the stories, a more open-minded approach can be taken with reflecting on how the world and societies we aren’t familiar with are perceived. We are encouraged to reflect upon the airplane hijacker’s grasp of the economic practices of the industry – there’s a place where you can rent demonstrators to be angry on your behalf, the option to confess your sins and a massacre with its own theme tune (courtesy of a karaoke-loving General). These are just a selection of the stories that Alexander Kelly, Chris Thorpe and Jorge Andrande take from their research-engine ‘Story Map’ and truly bring them to life.

“An arm of gravitas and sincerety to disarm”

If a flaw had to be found in what is a thoroughly thought-provoking production, it would be that despite the thought provoking nature of the tales told, there is very little structure holding everything together. This in itself isn’t a bad thing. What is slightly disappointing is that the nuances that arise from the consequences of what happens aren’t properly explored. There is extra depth that could be teased out in a way which wouldn’t compromise the atmosphere of being left to make our own interpretations.

Leaving the theatre, the initial sensations of wonder and naïve curiosity begin to be replaced with more sombre thoughts of the serious consequences and implications of what was told. What is definitely apparent though is that despite the fact that the more you learn about the world, there is that almost daunting realisation that there is so much more that you will never witness or experience. Somehow it all feels a bit closer than it did before.

What I Heard About the World is showing at the Soho Theatre until 3 March.