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Big Guns, theatre review: Elegant poetry in unsettling study of violence

Culture of violence: Jessye Romeo and Debra Baker star in Big Guns
Culture of violence: Jessye Romeo and Debra Baker star in Big Guns

In the aftermath of the Westminster attack it’s both poignant and powerful to watch a piece of theatre that reflects on and worries at the all-pervasiveness of violence in our society. Over the action looms the constant spectre of the so-called “man with the gun”, a previously fictional bogeyman who is now all too real.

Nina Segal has produced a piece of heightened, elegant poetry that proves at times something of an onslaught and also frustratingly fugitive for the theatre — I found myself wanting to pause the lines, rewind, reflect. Yet Dan Hutton’s slick, quickly spoken production hurtles on, to the evocative destabilising accompaniment of flickering light and a jangling sound design.

A compelling pair of performers, Debra Baker and Jessye Romeo, sit in a bunker-type space surrounded by cartons of drink and popcorn and wearing 3D glasses — our easy-entertainment culture of violence is all-pervasive. They take us through various scenarios of encounters, fear and violence.

The constant theme is the anonymous, sinister intimacy of the internet, with its hypnotic promise of access without responsibility. We hear of a beauty vlogger and a married couple with a blog and the gradual disintegration of these little worlds. Segal takes on a lot — too much — and leaves us bewildered but provoked and unsettled nonetheless.

Until April 8, The Yard; theyardtheatre.co.uk