Hope Hunt & the Ascension into Lazarus at Bold Tendencies

I often think I have a type of Cog Night. In the past I’ve been particularly a fan of abstract plays about frogs and myths, to sonic experiments with no physical actors. So when Oona Doherty’s Hope Hunt began with a beat up hatchback blasting rave music speeding into the apt setting of Bold Tendencies Peckham home I knew I was in for the sort of show I enjoy.

The scene was only helped by the sound of the nearby trains and the sweltering heat of a summer evening in the city which took me back to those balmy long nights listening to dubstep and skateboarding in car parks as a teenager.

We enjoyed a drink on the rooftop upstairs beforehand and explored some of the visual arts installations peppered across the roof whilst watching the sun starting to sink across a great skyline view. However, we were soon ushered downstairs to the performance space. When we arrived it wasn’t quite clear where we should stand or be looking. Thankfully some audience members insisted on chairs which the staff laid out which saved us all from looking the wrong way as the piece started.

The evening opened with Hope Hunt which was a short and perfectly formed piece. Oona showed an impressive physicality that veered between visceral and vulnerable within seconds. It was particularly impressive to see her so convincingly exude a threatening swagger filled masculine energy. Baiting and goading the crowd one moment and then cheering and hugging them the next. Our studio manager Kasia was a willing participant – meeting Oona’s energy and bringing a grin out of the swaggering character in front of us.

Almost as soon we’d settled everything changed the car sped off and the young man in front of us was left standing alone in silence. They quickly recovered however Oona – in character – ushered and cajoled the crowd around the corner to a more traditional performance area backed by a curtain and a with a smattering of seats provided.

Here (and I still think part of Hope Hunt) her performance took an interesting step towards physical theatre, with speech incorporated. This was the weakest point of the evening for me. There was humour and funny wordplay “Scheiße–shell-suit–Chelsea–sure I’ll say” stuck in my mind for longer than I’d like to admit. But I found it hard to connect this to what we’d seen before and it felt like an unnecessary coda to the perfectly formed concentrated power of what had come before.

The second part of the performance was the Ascension into Lazarus, an ensemble piece which involved a group of white clad dancers who joined Oona (now also in white) in performing to a strange mash up of Allegri’s Miserere and soundscapes of conversations and pubs. It’s a difficult piece to describe (as if writing about dance is easy at the best of times) again the piece was brimming with masculine energy. In the gestures of the dancers, their physicality and the distant voices overheard in the soundscape.

Both pieces hung together with the thread of this energy – exploring what felt like the myriad pressures and stresses felt by young men. To be strong, to be confident, to know where you’re going and maybe to hide the fear and vulnerability that sits beneath it all.

I thoroughly enjoyed this Cog Night. I felt like through the abstraction there was a real soul to the energy in the work that particularly as a (once young) anxious man I could really connect with. For me the best art makes us look at the world through different eyes and this really did do that for me.

The team also enjoyed it, so much in fact that Danny revisited later in the week to see a subsequent premiere of a new work as part of the same programme. Bold Tendencies’ 20th anniversary season continues throughout the summer.