Body 115, Jack Studio Theatre Review

Written by Charlotte for Theatre and Tonic.

Disclaimer: Tickets were gifted in return for an honest review. All views are my own.

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Jan Noble’s medium-bending Body 115 begins in the rain. The intimate black box of the Jack Studio Theatre is transformed into a rain-soaked street by a hauntingly simple beam of light falling on a suitcase amidst a cloud of haze. The rumble of a downpour underscores the empty stage – so much so that I felt the urge to reach for my jumper, entirely convinced by the careful work of designers Tom Turner and Jack Arnold that this room was indeed much colder and damper than the pub just next door.  

While the incredibly effective design may be simple, the piece is anything but. Body 115 defies definition. Is it poetry? Theatre? Both? Neither? I suspect these are the kinds of questions Noble wants his audience to ask. With an hour, a nearly bare stage, and a rugged jacket, he traverses the ashen world below London, the worn-out luster of Paris, and the gray-cast piazzas of Milan in something which can only be defined as a true epic. Led by a ghostly remnant of the King’s Cross fire, a primordial juxtaposition against the rainy backdrop, Noble’s poetic hero gives modern Europe the same grand, folkloric attention as Homer did many millennia ago. It is obvious that prose is like clay in Noble’s hands, earthy and rich and transformative. 

With such complex wielding of words comes certain unavoidable limitations. Body 115 demands a high level of intellectual engagement if you hope to really appreciate or even follow it. I hesitate to posit this is a limitation – not all art can or should be easy to watch, after all – but it is a factor which does limit audiences by their ability to keep up with the swift pace of Noble’s odyssey especially given that, unlike in written forms, the pace at which you must make sense of the poetry is fixed. There is no returning to the prior sentence if you did not catch it in full the first time. In many ways, this feels like a piece that needs to be viewed more than once if one wants to really begin peeling back its layers, something which is both a testament to its complexity and a somewhat frustrating experience. Luckily for those that do wish to return to that one line or the piece as a whole, Noble does have a full audio reading posted to his website. Not only is this a great (and I’d even argue necessary) addition to the experience of the show, it’s a testament to the amorphous nature of Body 115 as a piece.

Whatever genre, medium, or form you find Body 115 to be, it is certainly a courageous piece of performance. And even as I found myself personally feeling that I may have preferred to experience this work in writing or through an audio so I could explore at my own pace, I also decidedly felt that Noble is bringing to fringe exactly what should be brought to fringe: an experiment in form, a reification of ancient approaches, and a resolute commitment to being boldly human.

At Jack Studio Theatre until 11 May 2024.

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆