Oh My Pain, my beautiful pain!
Pleasance Theatre, London
February 7 - March 1, 2025
★★★★ | “A lucid and emotionally literate piece of theatre with surprising humour” - The Stage
★★★★ | “achingly good satire… this weird, wonderful production is wildly entertaining from start to finish.” - Reviews Hub
★★★★ | “the combination of drag, clowning, poached-egg-themed tap dancing and hallucinatory dream sequences swirl together to create a genuinely joyful piece of absurdist theatre, which takes difficult themes and rids them of their power by pushing them to Dadaist extremes.” - London Pub Theatres
★★★★★ | “an exhilarating evening of hard-hitting themes wrapped in inventive drag and cabaret” - Salterton Arts Review
Synopsis
“When does making this work start to help? When does the healing bit start?”
Natalia makes the type of work people describe as ‘RAW’, ‘BRAVE’, and ‘HEARTACHINGLY VULNERABLE’. And everyone loves it - critics, audiences, the people who do bookings for TED Talks. They all want more, and she’s promised it to them. Only she’s run out of trauma to write about. More specifically, her own trauma. Perhaps she can borrow some from those around her? Or can she create some?
This fast-paced satirical play uses drag, cabaret and clowning to explore the cultural impetus on artists to exploit deeply personal stories in their work, and exposes the personal cost of working in an industry that wants more pain, more truth, more trauma.
Performed by Evie Fehilly, Posey Mehta and John-Luke Roberts
Writer | Evie Fehilly
Director | John King
Producer | Morag Davies, for Relish Theatre
Costume Designer | Daniel Hall
Sound Designer | Hattie North
Lighting Designer | Catja Hamilton
AV Designer | Doug Baker
Choreographer | David Allwood
Intimacy Director | Christina Fulcher
Stage Manager | Danae Crawford
ASM | Reuben Bojang
Associate Producers | Ben Quashie and Pleasance Theatre
Assistant Producer | Ella Dale
General Manager | Rob Ellis
Production Manager | Pete Rickards
Casting Director | Matt Sheppard
Artist Wellbeing Coordinators | Lou Platt and Haydn Forde
Marketing Assistant | Pippa Conway
Design Assistant | Aleks Kowara
Photography by Cam Harle