After All review – a goofy whirl of remembrance
Assembly @ Dance Base, Edinburgh
Mushroom coffins, organic wool shrouds and funeral re-enactments pepper Solène Weinachter’s light touch but poignant show
Sinatra, T Rex, pan pipe muzak: what will be the soundtrack to your funeral? Who will be there? What will they say? When Solène Weinachter was unexpectedly cajoled into dancing at her uncle Bob’s cremation, she found herself pondering these very questions, and she has turned those thoughts into a surprisingly upbeat piece of dance-theatre on mortality and remembrance.
The French-born Weinachter is known as a member of Scottish Dance Theatre, and for working with Ben Duke and his company Lost Dog, especially playing Juliet in the table-turning Juliet & Romeo. After All is not a million miles away in tone from Duke’s dance theatre work, in the way it uses a light touch and self-effacing personality but swerves into deeper themes.
Weinachter is confidently warm and funny, in command of her material. That material is mostly text, peppered with telling details, such as the aunt whose green eyeshadow matches the colour of her scarf. But it is delivered in the way only a physical performer could, with dance an extension of her words, energy and often goofy tone.
What starts as a tight monologue unravels more loosely into a journey into modern funeral mores, complete with mushroom coffins and organic wool shrouds, alongside musings on the need to be remembered. Weinachter cycles through emotions – a fake home video is surprisingly poignant, loneliness and childlessness are briefly touched on – but is always quick to find a laugh. She shares the stage with sign language interpreter Yvonne Strain, an integral part of the performance, who demonstrates some comic timing of her own.
Weinachter tells us she loves “tasty” beginnings, bursting with possibility, but she hates endings, setting up some jeopardy over whether she will land the big finish here. It works, but there is probably more to explore in this piece as a whole, a way of really pulling the rug from underneath that jokey exterior. At one point, she almost loses us when she goes off on a crying spree, then very knowingly describes exactly the feelings we have just been experiencing. We see Weinachter “acting” vulnerable, but maybe not being vulnerable. This is a cleverly entertaining piece with the makings of something even better.
• At Assembly @ Dance Base, Edinburgh, until 27 August
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