Norwich Theatre Royal – 24th & 25th May 2024
Reviewed by Boo Wakefield
4****
For two nights only, an Accident/a Life is on at Norwich Theatre as part of the Norfolk and Norwich Festival. Directed by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, this is a play by Marc Brew, about Marc Brew, with him the only identifiable actor on the stage and, save for a recording of a video call with his mother, his the only voice; it is his story of his trauma, of his surviving a car crash in South Africa in which his three fellow passengers, his friends, died; of his fight to survive; of his learning he had been left paraplegic and his embryonic career as a dancer denied him; and of his new life beginning. It is harrowing and poignant – and as an affirmation of the indomitable strength of the human spirit and the unconditional love of a mother for her son, it is a masterpiece.
As a production, it fits no neat ‘genre’ pigeonhole; it is unlike anything you will have seen before. Marc is in constant motion, but it isn’t dance as you know it, as he drags his hyperflexible, lifeless legs behind him, placing them with his hands into impossible contortions, leaving his audience never comfortable. The set (by Designer Pepijn Van Looy) is stunningly effective with screens on either side and the car from the accident suspended by its rear bumper gently rotating above him, a reminder of the accident’s constant presence in his life. Masked figures as crash-test dummies (Lewis Landini and Kazutomi Kozuki) join him on the stage with hand-held video cameras, the images they capture projected onto the screens, Marc ‘breaking the fourth wall’ to talk to camera and thereby onto the screens and to his audience; and a musical score of mood-music contrasting jarringly with Marc’s soft voice and then surreal moments like Toto’s anthem Africa on full-blast with the lyrics projected on the screen to sing along to.
The play claws at your compassion and empathy for Marc and what he has been through, but it also leaves you with a sense of having participated in a material step on Marc’s journey of recovery to his new life, of having been part of helping him regain his own sense of self-esteem and self-value through a return to the stage and to what he craved before the accident – being the focus of attention and being able to express himself to an adoring audience of which you are part; and in that sense it takes rather more from you than it gives.