This Way Up

39658 original

Fringe audiences—usually well-stocked with idealistic performers and cultural aficionados—will probably be more automatically sympathetic than most to the plight of a young artist trying to hang on to dignity and integrity in a desolate economy. Nevertheless, the Antler Theatre's blend of spaced-out romantic comedy and pointed social commentary could earn that sympathy from any audience by sheer merit alone.

The newly graduated Alex (a brilliant Daniela Pasquini) is determined to succeed as an artist, and from the moment she steps on stage—moving into a flat that proves to be electricity-free—every problem and irritant she encounters is merely an obstacle on the way to that goal. While Alex struggles to maintain a battered optimism, we follow her through three strange years spent working in a purgatorial call centre, surrounded by grotesques damaged by a life of uninspiring monotony.

While avoiding the usual tropes of agitprop entirely, This Way Up still manages to be an impassioned theatrical portrayal of the lost generation, delicately expressing the daily humiliations of surviving, rather than living, in a part-time world. Yet it is the heartwarming, heartbreaking, adorably childlike romance between Alex and Mark (a quietly hilarious Nasi Voutsas), her boy-man co-worker, that truly makes the play special. Their blossoming love, played out through imaginary space adventures and David Bowie, is what will capture your fascination as well as your sympathy. While at least one subplot could be sheared, This Way Up manages to be both moving and ridiculous simultaneously.