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.