REVIEW | This Is The Land, VAULT Festival

★★★

Reviewer - Charlene

*Disclaimer: Gifted tickets in return for an honest review.

The heart of Waterloo is currently buzzing as the UK’s leading independent showcase of live performance and artistic talent, VAULT Festival is currently well underway. Featuring thousands of sensational performances across Theatre, Comedy & Live Entertainment has been created by the most exciting and boldest artists of our time. It’s a joy to be able to experience it for myself.

This Is The Land is an innovative creative collaboration that features Leeza Jessie, Xavier De Santos, Samuel De La Torre, Alice Barton, Sofia Velez and composer John Baggott. The production touches on a lot of things that could not be more reflective and relevant to the issues of our times - ecological crisis, social inequality, and political repression of dissenting voices – whilst raising these in a highly original way.

This production was something new and out of my comfort zone - but that isn’t the beauty of theatre. Network Theatre is a small hidden gem tucked away beneath Waterloo Station which provided a perfect intimate setting for This Is The Land. The audience is taken on a journey of dance, movement, singing, humour and expression. Collectively this makes it evocative and captivating to watch. There were elements of unpredictability leaving you in anticipation of what was happening next.

The stage was used to its full potential, and I personally was impressed by how Samuel de la Torre responded to it within his movement in this performance. Leeza Jessie had a fantastic and varied range from her singing to her ode to a nobbly Bobbly lolly. I was also transfixed by the long locks of Xavier whose hair added fluidity and magic to the movements.

Whilst I was captivated by the performance, I did find there was a lack of connection between the pieces. This unfortunately left me confused as to what was happening. At times it verged on being too silly, so any deliverance of a message was lost in translation 

However, this may be due to me not seeing many shows like this that experience may enable a deeper understanding . So, a positive is this has inspired me to see more like this and I definitely think it has scope to develop further.

It was an interesting and insightful experience for a Saturday afternoon .