REVIEW: ALL THIS MUST PASS by Aurelia Gage at The Lion and Unicorn Theatre 4 – 8 Jan 2023

‘… it draws you in, takes you on a journey, then crashes in on the world you’ve constructed in your head’ ★★★★

In the black box theatre, upstairs at The Lion & Unicorn, there’s no knowing what will appear from behind the curtain. A single chair, the only prop awaits. The Canadian solo performer, Aidan Morris enters in an antique rose satin cocktail dress and unnaturally blonde demi-wave. Marilyn Monroe meets Lucille Ball. One person performances take some front; to stand alone and hold an audience requires skill and self-assurance. She has it. This is a fun skit, you think, a thespian’s Who Do You Think You Are? but like all the best theatre, it draws you in, takes you on a journey, then crashes in on the world you’ve constructed in your head.

The direction by writer, Aurelia Gage assisted by Adelina Uglow, keeps the pace moving with subtle tonal shifts. Historical slices are infused with comedy, even rap while light and shade play off each other. As a dancer and comedienne, Morris draws on all her audience-entrancing skills as she explores her family heritage with a great sense of animation. As she walks the audience through the French courts, Salem witch trials, Ireland’s potato Famine and WW2, we meet her ancestors, an entire sub-cast of colourful characters. Some are unlikable, some unstable, their lifetime secrets gleefully divulged.

If every story needs a beginning, middle and end, but not necessarily in that order, All This Must Pass, offers this narrative reordering with great effect. The audience are not privy to the inciting incident until the final scene, when we understand why this quest into the past has been taken … we are prompted to consider all the absences in a family tree, those genetic castaways who never made the A-List. The transience of existence and construction of identity hover beneath the text alongside a compelling strand around mental trauma and how this is understood over time.

Originally performed as part of the Camden Fringe in August 2022, All This Must Pass is topped and tailed by a curious dance, creaky and doll-like. Morris twists, turns and organises her limbs into postured angles. In the beginning, we have no conceptual framework for this, but eventually come to see it as the dance of time. When a depth of feeling or great loss cannot be verbally articulated, the thoughtful choreography offers the audience space and pause for reflection. In this moment, we realise life is this; a series of passing moments. An entertaining and thought-provoking hour well spent, catch this production before it too passes.

ALL THIS MUST PASS by Aurelia Gage

The Lion and Unicorn Theatre

4 – 8 Jan 2023

Box Office https://www.thelionandunicorntheatre.com/whats-on

Reviewed by Nilgin Yusuf

An experienced author, lecturer and journalist (ex-Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph and ELLE) Nilgin is developing her first full-length stage play, supported by Mrs.C’s Collective and the Arts Council