When We Embraced

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On a wonky-looking wooden chair, beneath ribbons of faintly glowing bulbs hanging from the ceiling, sits a small retro amplifier and, well, that’s literally about it for this show visuals – wise save for some subtle lighting shifts.

Effectively using the audience as its cast and characters, When We Embraced is an adventurous, playful and inventive little wonder by FallenFromGrace—the Newcastle-based performer and theatre maker Tom Walton—whose voice crackles from the speaker. And, though he never appears, is clearly watching us all somehow (camera? a crack in the curtain?).

Singled out individually by their appearance, nearly everyone in the room is at some point each made a surrogate vessel through which a variety of witty, whimsical and poignant thoughts, reflections, memories and emotions are eloquently transmitted. Though everyone understandably gets quite self-conscience when the spotlight falls on them, Walton’s intention is never to humiliate anyone, but rather use his crowd and their natural awkwardness to benignly illuminate the grace of social interaction. Fate after all brought each of us this far together today, and as he puts it, “in this room there is potential.”

Two people in particular – the extraordinary-ordinary man and “our hero”, a lady who’d by all squirming appearances would like for the floor to open and swallow her – are led on a journey ultimately to a contact of sorts. Like most people in the room I imagine, I’m silently delighted it wasn’t me that was picked, but the arc and outcome of this pair’s experience, however faltering, is nevertheless inspiring and not a little heart-warming to see.