New Step Theatre is a joint venture by writer Joe Ward Munrow and director Nathan Powell which has set out to produce urgent, relevant storytelling that can be taken to its audience not just in a formal theatre setting but in a variety of spaces wherever these stories need to be heard.
In Joe Ward Munrow’s new work Dogs, we meet two characters simply identified as T and D. Joe Owens plays T, incarcerated in a cell, brooding on the events that have brought him here. He alternately sits on his bed with his thoughts visibly gnawing at him, and paces around the enclosed space.
D is played by Ade Ajibade, and whilst she has more freedom of physical movement she is every bit as imprisoned by her life. Torn between the frustrations of a demanding job and a need to understand the past she shares with T, she contemplates the painful present and future decisions this past leaves her facing.
On a small raised platform their two spaces, in Ellie Light’s claustrophobic set design, enclose one another but are distinctly separate, joined only for brief periods in a tiny room in which they speak to each other through an unseen barrier. In these brief meetings there is anger and frustration under which lies an obvious bond. They are like a pair of powerful magnets that, as events twist and turn them, are both attracted to and repelled from one another, the forces linking them reaching beyond and through any physical walls.
It is a complex, layered piece of writing which gradually enables us to piece together the couple’s shared history and the events that drew them together, which have gone on to physically and mentally injure both them and others around them. The dialogue often comes in explosive bursts, and is punctuated by periods of wordless internalised torment, in which both characters simultaneously attack and defend themselves and each other. It is bleak and powerful storytelling that emphasises the importance of honest communication over spiralling introspection.
Underscored by an atmospheric soundtrack from Eliyana Evans, the action maintains a pulse that is kept beating evenly through extremes of movement and stillness under Powell’s assured and thoughtful direction.
Dogs is at once enigmatic and thought provoking, and could easily be understood on a number of different levels, but its exploration of the way we are all shaped both by our DNA and the world that surrounds us is vivid and powerful.
Ade Ajibade and Joe Owens in Dogs - image © Ryan Tomes
Star rating: 4 stars
This review was originally written for publication by Good News Liverpool
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