‘A moving and original one woman show about cancer’ ★★★★

A moving and original one-woman show about cancer, this 60 minute, very physical, performance uses dance, song, and light to arresting effect.

Ukrainian Valery Reva, who has written this piece as well as performing it, is compelling to watch as she jumps between moods telling, and enacting, a poignantly and powerful story. Her character, who lives with a boyfriend in London, goes home to Ukraine for thyroid cancer surgery which takes place in a war-afflicted hospital. There, while sheltering in the basement during an air-raid she distracts a very sick child (using, ingeniously, her own knee as a puppet) with a symbolic story about seeing off a monster.

She does all this with a range of voices. Speaking is one thing. Few people can find different singing voices to suit the character or mood in the way Reva does. And she uses her long thick hair as a prop, throwing it over her face, shaking it, plaiting it and pinning it back. It’s intriguingly charismatic. Her character talks at the start about her sexy hair and her refusal to shave it off for a role when she was eighteen. Now she avoids chemotherapy and retains her hair (hence the play’s title) making, in character, some thoughtful remarks about the importance of hair in different cultures and religions.

Gabe Gilmour’s design provides a thoughtfully atmospheric gauzy white curtain, behind which Reva  dives and performs through. It stands for dreams, mysteries and the fearful unknown. At one point if becomes a mirror which is, at least for the sick child, a metaphor for death.

It’s an engaging piece of theatre, well worth seeing and I was sorry to be one of only seven people in the audience at the performance I saw.

SEFest https://thebridgehousetheatre.co.uk/se-fest/

This review was first published by London Pub Theatres Magazine: https://www.londonpubtheatres.com/review-at-least-im-not-bald-by-valery-reva-sefest-at-bridge-house-theatre-12-13-sept-2024