★★★★★
There is a walrus on a boat, a bear on the trails in Colorado and a stag in the Halewood Tesco. What sounds like beginnings of a joke is in equal parts a magnificent, comic, and poignant performance weaving between the lives of three individuals as they navigate the intersection of nature and humankind. Written by the unstoppable Billie Collins and directed by Nathan Crossan-Smith, The Walrus Has a Right to Adventure will halt you in your tracks and put your world on hold for all 95 glorious minutes.
There is immediate audience participation. Microphones are set up onstage in stations with a resemblance to a recording studio. Before the audience are transported into each of the three characters’ worlds, there is some uncertainty, some question of what exactly to expect. It transpires that the microphones set every scene. They are the fabric of the performance. A plethora of inventive, subtle and entirely convincing audio effects are used to bring nature—animals, plants, every part of the world around us—into the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool. At once impressive and all consuming, the three person show fills every corner of the theatre.
Oskar (Reginald Edwards) is a tour guide in Norway, Hazel (Princess Khumalo) a budding runner in Colorado, and Rio (Tasha Dowd) a shelf-stacker in Liverpool. Each has a life rich in relationships of their own; characters who pepper the stage at will, from cosmic scouser Nick to an all-American brother to Pappa, who has the same conversation every day and is stuck in a bygone world. As the actors multi-role through scenes that merge into one another with fluidity and whimsy, the stories mirror with quiet tenderness. Whilst the script deals with loss, heartache, and that sort of panicky feeling that takes your breath away with absolute deft, it is also, quite simply, hilarious. Complimenting each other with ease, each performer shines across their roles, breathing life into each and every scene of the plot.
A laugh-a-minute, the performance will have you crying at the ups and the downs and everything in between. The way that Collins captures humanity and hands it to the audience so plainly, yet underscored with wit and intelligence is hard to come by. Soaring both in its grand but subtle metaphors and its foray into the plain old every day, The Walrus Has a Right to Adventure compels through talented, captivating acting, smart technological effects and well-used lighting. When only a sweat band is required for an actor to pivot to an entirely different character without anybody blinking an eye, you know you’ve hit the jackpot (Edwards doesn’t miss a beat).
The performance has all the ingredients of utter brilliance. It is a moving tribute to nature and humanity, and encapsulates individual lives in all their nuance with theatrical genius. Finely-tuned comic timing, fizzing creativity, and a dash of the bigger picture makes for a cocktail of a show that you never want to end. It is hopeful, heartfelt and larger than life. Credit where it is due, The Walrus Has a Right to Adventure brings exciting novel writing to the fore and deserves all of your attention.
The Walrus Has a Right to Adventure will be performed at Liverpool’s Everyman Theatre until 21 June.
Words by Hannah Goldswain
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