Latest news with #Wrest
The Spinoff
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Spinoff
Review: Wrest is too much show
Sam Brooks reviews the new show from Red Leap, a visually stunning mix of theatre and dance. A mundane breakfast, repeated ad nauseam. A coat check in a club. A bloody operating table. A woman pulled in two in a moment at a bus stop. These are images that show up in Red Leap's new show, Wrest, a hybrid of theatre and dance exploring early motherhood. These are also the images that have lingered with me long after the show. They aren't necessarily the images that you might associate with the setting of Wrest, which is set in a neo-noir world that feels closer to Cyberpunk 2077 or Deus Ex than the modern day. They also aren't the images you would associate with the actual narrative of Wrest, which follows a woman – or really, two women, played by Shavorn Mortimer and Ariāna Osborne – literally and sometimes metaphorically finding themselves. Wrest is two shows in one, and too often, these two shows seem in conflict with each other rather than in conversation. The show about motherhood is moving, with a vibrant physicality. The neo-noir mystery allows the show to play inside a rich, familiar, canvas. Too often, however, the mystery is put on pause to develop a visual language, which makes the sequences where the mystery takes centre stage feel perfunctory and even explanatory, rather than evocative. Neither is bad, although I prefer the show about motherhood to the mystery, but they seldom feel connected to each other. The best thing about a Red Leap show is that they demand a lot of the artists they work with, and the artists – on and offstage – absolutely rise to the occasion. While the neo-noir setting lends itself to impressive imagery and an undeniable style, it distracts from the themes of motherhood and identity that Wrest is clearly more interested in exploring. It's not necessarily a question of genre – noir is a broad church of interrogations into various human conditions – but of balance. As the leads, Mortimer and Osborne nail two sides of the same coin. They match each other's physicality and vocal musicality – even though the show has scant dialogue – without being exact mirrors of each other. Mortimer wrangles with the show's centrepiece adeptly, and it's a moment that risks becoming the show's thematic statement just in case the audience have missed it, but she grounds it in an aching humanity that makes the preceding 75 minutes feel worth it, even cohesive. The ensemble is, as is usual for Red Leap, excellent, with Shadon Meredith's specific character work being especially impressive; he moves like a dancer, not like an actor working with choreography. Red Leap is also a company that never fails to deliver, visually and aurally. It goes, then, that the production design, courtesy of Rachel Marlow at Filament 11, is world-class. Sets that would be centrepieces in other productions seem to pop out of nowhere, and disappear just as quickly. A full nightclub is simply (to the audience) spun into focus and then spun out of focus. It is seamless, and impressive. It's in the design that the two shows sitting inside Wrest feel like they actually could belong together. The coldness, even the meaninglessness of the neo-noir world that the two women inhabit, is a rich palette for the lack of direction the characters feel. Where the show really reaches out and grabs you is in the body horror moments – amped up by Eden Mulholland's haunting score – a reminder that some of the most seemingly natural and normal things that a human might go through can be the most absolutely horrific when viewed from afar, or examined from a different direction. The images are so beautiful, so specific, and so rich, but they are so unsupported by the narrative that they end up feeling less like pieces of live performance and movement and more like paintings in a gallery. The designers are working at the height of their ability here, but the story is too generic, and too confusing, that it ends up forming its own kind of fourth wall, placing the audience at a remove when we should be invested. It also doesn't help that the show is very light on dialogue in a genre that is famous for its intricate, musical patter. Noir is the rare genre that can get away with the audience walking away not understanding everything that happened, and dance is an artform that lingers in the same lack of comprehension, but it doesn't feel intentional here. As complaints go, 'too much show' is not the worst one. There is so much at play in Wrest that the genuinely moving, and distressing, exploration of motherhood is hidden. There's so much good in this show, but it's not necessarily the kind of good that fits on the same stage. I'd love to see Red Leap tackle a neo-noir, and play with this cinematic language more onstage. I'd also love to see them continue to explore this thematic territory, I could see a thousand shows about motherhood and still want to see more. In this case, however, I found myself wanting to – apologies – wrest Wrest from itself.
NZ Herald
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- NZ Herald
Tama Jarman stars in Red Leap Theatre's crime thriller ‘Wrest' in Whangārei
The murder at the bus stop relates to the 'death' of the person she was before becoming a parent. The cast includes Tama Jarman, 38, who lived in Whangārei from the age of 5 until 20. After attending Whangārei Boys' High School, where he took drama, he wound up at South Seas Film and Television School in Auckland, from where his career flourished. 'I was working at Killer Prawn for a while after I left school and, after work, we'd head across the road to Bacio, which was owned by Des Wallace who'd done a bit of acting. 'I used to be a bit of a break dancer and I'd show my moves off and one day he said, 'What are you going to do Tama?' He'd gone to South Seas and had success as an actor from it and then bought the bar so I decided to give it a go – Des started it all!' Jarman has been working as a freelance actor since, with TV stints including Shortland Street and Westside, multiple ads and loads of theatre. He has been involved with Red Theatre since its inception in 2008 and undertaken many roles. In Wrest his main role is as a detective. Wrest came about when acclaimed performing artists and Kiwi mums Ella Becroft and Tor Colombus decided to combine their two worlds to create a new theatre show which explores motherhood's hidden darker side. The crime thriller is centred on a missing woman and a doppelganger with the unfolding mystery laying bare the mundane and sometimes monstrous reality of early motherhood. When the original woman mysteriously disappears, an uncanny doppelganger emerges. Stalked by detectives seeking answers, the doppelganger hunts visions of her original self, determined to rebuild. Becroft, who also directs the show, explains: 'When having a baby, women are expected to transition with ease – to transform into a completely new self that can seem at odds with who they know themselves to be. I felt like I became a stranger, a doppelganger of my child-free self. 'What we have come to accept as 'normal' birth can be deeply disturbing for many women. The transformative experience of pregnancy, birth, and motherhood doesn't match pervasive cultural narratives.' The project combines the cast and creative teams' personal experiences of pregnancy, birth, and motherhood with scientific, medical, and psychological insights to illuminate this often hidden experience. The main piece of text used as inspiration for the show was the book Matrescence by Lucy Jones. Jones, a scientific writer, has pieced together science, medicine and psychology in her book to explain what a woman experiences. From there, the team further researched processes and changes. Colombus, who is also the choreographer, says: 'In the rehearsal room for Wrest, there were moments where a parent would tell a story about the unexpected struggle of motherhood, the moments of rage, and the physical pain of it, that they had never spoken out loud before". 'There is a power to a woman sharing her authentic experience, and we hope this show will empower others to do the same.' The show encourages audiences to re-evaluate their perceptions of motherhood and to support women in their journeys. Jarman describes it as a dark and moody surreal crime thriller using devised physical theatre. 'We're given a rough story outline so we had a thread to follow. We've got a setting, now we've just got to build the story and physicalise what happens,' he explains. 'There's bones and we create the body and the flesh. For example, we might be asked to show five ways you could disappear into a portal. Then we all piece together the moments of gold amongst the many, many bad moments.' Although he returns to Whangārei often to visit family and has brought shows there in the past, he's looking forward to performing there next week. 'I'm just stoked to be doing what I do in my hometown. I'm excited to bring it up there and get some of my mates that are still there along and hopefully parents have a moment where they feel heard.' He equates Wrest with a David Lynch film and says audiences can expect excitement, tension, along with some dark moments among a well-constructed story. 'It's quite mysterious but when you do work it out, it's very satisfying so hopefully the audience has a satisfying experience.' Wrest runs from May 29-31 at 7.30pm-8.30pm in OneOneSix Bank St, followed by shows in Auckland in June. Tickets from Eventfinda.
Scotsman
28-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Wrest, Glasgow review: 'trudging through the motions'
Wrest feels more like a functional business plan than a heartfelt musical endeavour, writes Paul Whitelaw Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Wrest, Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow ★★ Edinburgh's Wrest are a genuinely independent grass-roots success story. They're unsigned, they've self-released three albums, they run their own promotions company, and they recently played a sold-out headline show at the Barrowlands. That's all quite impressive, but Wrest are also a risk-averse MOR guitar band who needn't ever worry about being crushed under the weight of their own inventiveness. Blatantly indebted to the sensitive anthem-sized likes of Snow Patrol, Coldplay, U2 and Frightened Rabbit, they have no ideas or personality of their own. The paucity of ambition is bewildering. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Singer-songwriter Stewart Douglas has forensically studied those bands and worked out the basic formula for writing A Big Emotional Anthem, which wouldn't really matter if he had at least one gem in his arsenal to match the undeniable phones-aloft triumph of, say, Chasing Cars or Yellow. But he hasn't. Every mid-paced song sounds exactly the same – a generic grey mass of two or three strummed chords, simple lead guitar lines, pulsing With or Without You bass, derivative vocal melodies and 'soaring' arrangements designed to surge dramatically at just the right moment. It's all so predictable. Whereas Frightened Rabbit once used this well-worn template to express complex feelings in a powerfully honest way, Wrest deal in mere Hallmark platitudes. Douglas is constantly urging us to 'keep going' in the face of adversity etc. Well-meaning sentiments, but hardly useful in the grand, challenging scheme of things. Performance-wise they're just four nondescript – and probably very nice – men trudging through the motions, their ordinariness emphasised by the surrounding beauty of this old Glasgow venue (which wasn't sold out).
