Victor Esses  [Christa Holka]

The Death and Life of All of Us
Camden People’s Yheatre
☆☆☆

Victor Esses is a Jewish-Lebanese Latinx queer performance artist who use multimedia to explore issues of identity, belonging and shame. His latest work opens Camden People’s Theatre’s spring season.

Aged 19, Esses visited his great-aunt Marcelle in Rome. Through a series of interviews, he discovered she’d converted from Judaism to Christianity, and moved from Lebanon to Italy, changed her name and kept a life-long secret.

Inspired by her rebellious spirit, Victor started making a documentary about her life and passion for golf. He didn’t always like what he heard. Twenty years later, this 60-minute show is his attempt to complete the project from hours of footage.

The Death and Life of All of Us mixes home video, confessional storytelling and original live-music from talented Italian composer-musician Enrico Aurigemma.

The show has enjoyed a successful run at the Edinburgh Fringe festival and at Soho Theatre, but still retains a work-in-progress feel and improvisational energy that is, at times, endearing.

The text projected on the wall is not always legible, there is some poor blocking, and Esses’s live recitation often differs from the scrolling script behind him.

It’s a shame because he explores interesting ideas about family and memories and what we choose to share. We witness his aunt telling and refining stories about her life while Esses seeks to create his own narrative about his background and an identity that is in conflict with his inherited culture.

As he reminds us, much of the projected script underlines what his characters “want us to know” about them. Meanwhile, Esses constantly asks what we are prepared to reveal about ourselves.

It an enjoyable hour, but with more work and focus this could be a striking performance piece.

Until April 13
cptheatre.co.uk/