Reviewed by Lox Dix­on.
Presen­ted as a part of TAHI Fest­iv­al, 2022.

I’m going to make an earn­est effort to men­tion the writ­ing as little as pos­sible in this review because that’s not really the point and every­one prob­ably knows by now that Will Eno is a phe­nom­en­al writer.

That said, the beauty of this mono­logue is in the writ­ing, and it’s the words that res­on­ate with you, so it will be hard to stay away from men­tion­ing it entirely.

I also need to make men­tion of an unfor­tu­nate occur­rence that frames the way I saw this show. In my first attempt to see this piece, exactly a week pri­or to the per­form­ance I did get to see in its entirety, the act­or was unable to con­tin­ue the per­form­ance after strug­gling for lines about 20 minutes in. The major­ity of the piece is delivered in a ram­bling, old man telling us stor­ies of his youth style, so I was con­sid­er­ably anxious through­out the per­form­ance that I did see in its entirety.

Steven Ray sits on a met­al chair, a neut­ral expres­sion on his face, music with a middle-east­ern vibe twanging through the theatre sound sys­tem as we take our seats. He is dressed in a white lin­en suit,reminiscent of a Brit­ish aris­to­crat in India, or Egypt, or some oth­er area renowned for its hot cli­mate.

Next to him is an ordin­ary look­ing piece of lug­gage, with a wooden walk­ing stick-esque tucked nicely into the handle.

I like to be seated a few minutes early whenev­er pos­sible at the theatre. I enjoy the oppor­tun­ity to accli­mat­ise to the atmo­sphere the cre­at­ive team has put togeth­er, listen to the music, take in the stage set­ting before it comes to life. This is a show that plays nicely to those of us with this par­tic­u­lar pre­dis­pos­i­tion. By the time Steven utters the first line of the show, I have had time to stew in the curi­os­ity, and am incred­ibly anxious to be taken on a jour­ney.

The audi­ence finds their seats, the doors close, Steven turns his head to us, and he says the line that haunts me for the rest of the show, and as I drive home after­wards… “I’m not from here.”

The show pro­ceeds through a some­times exhaust­ing series of traveller’s anec­dotes, obser­va­tions from a cul­tur­al “out­sider”, stor­ies from the home­land, and fond recol­lec­tion of the unnamed character’s par­ents. It is the sort of show that will res­on­ate with dif­fer­ent people for dif­fer­ent reas­ons. I sus­pect for the older audi­ence mem­bers it will draw up memor­ies both fond and pain­ful of emig­ra­tion, upbring­ing under par­ents from an entirely dif­fer­ent era who have long passed, and tra­di­tions they have had an act­ive part in keep­ing alive.

For me, the res­on­ant parts of the show are those that touch on the exper­i­ence of being a wan­der­er. I spent a decent chunk of time abroad through my early 20s, and the feel­ings of for­eignness, con­fu­sion, observing the trivi­al cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences between “away” and “home”, and then strug­gling to define what “home” is hit me hard. This is per­haps why the open­ing line stuck so strongly with me.

Steven deliv­ers this mono­logue adequately, and tells the stor­ies well. He is every bit a pro­fes­sion­al, which made it incred­ibly hard to tell when I first tried to catch this show that he was los­ing his way, until it was all the way lost and the show called off.

This being the case, there were a few moments of pause where I was wor­ried it was all headed south again that per­fectly fit the por­tray­al of the char­ac­ter as an older man reflect­ing on his life in real-time. At no point did this piece feel like a delivered pre-writ­ten piece of theatre, which is a real cred­it to Steven’s per­form­ance abil­ity and the way he embod­ied the char­ac­ter.

The stark­ness of the stage, the age of the per­former, and the deliv­ery style added an extra dimen­sion to this show that I’m not sure would oth­er­wise exist. It felt a little bit like we had been wel­comed into a ver­sion of the after­life and were being told a story of someone’s life by a per­son who had died, and returned to a non-earthly realm. Per­haps that’s a bit woo-woo of an inter­pret­a­tion, but there are cer­tain lines in the piece that hint that way, and I applaud the ambi­gu­ity of the present­a­tion in leav­ing this line of inter­pret­a­tion open.

In par­tic­u­lar, and without giv­ing too much away, being quer­ied by an immig­ra­tion officer at the air­port about the nature of the vis­it, and respond­ing “I’m here to save us all”, gives the impres­sion of a naïve soul, not just that of a young trav­el­ler, but per­haps that of a per­son new to earthly life itself.

This is a won­der­fully writ­ten piece of theatre, staged with plenty of intrigue, and delivered in a fash­ion that both shows us someone endur­ing an emo­tion­al jour­ney through life and travel, and takes us on the jour­ney with them.

If ever you get the chance to see this piece per­formed, take it.