Review: Gecko’s The Wedding (Sadler’s Wells East)

Review by Heva Kelly

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This year marks the 25th anniversary since Gecko's founding, and it’s a long-overdue reunion for me. I once read that you never forget your first Gecko production, and this is unequivocally true. Harking back to a time in my early teens watching ‘Institute’ at the Edinburgh Fringe, and having my mind blown, I’ve spent the last ten years wondering why I hadn’t seen another Gecko Production since. That opportunity came with their new adaptation of ‘The Wedding’ performed at Sadler's Wells East as part of MimeLondon 2026. Have they kept their place on the top tier of physical theatre companies twenty-five years on, or have they tripped on the podium steps, coupling up with an incoming decline?

It seems Gecko never miss - they remain the steadfast reigning champions with another astonishing production. Doused in unmatched imagination and creativity, this show is nothing short of spectacular. The Wedding premiered in 2017 and has since been shown internationally, at venues including London’s Barbican Theatre,  Maribor Theatre Festival in Slovenia, and Stadsschouwburg in the Netherlands. This adaptation of The Wedding is a ‘stripped back version’ to echo the changing landscape of touring possibilities, and yet you would have no idea. With so many clever ‘feast for the eyes’ moments that seem so bold and extravagant, it is hard to imagine the production having a past life that was any more elaborate. Perhaps this shift to its raw bones, like a door to Narnia or a Tardis that’s bigger on the inside than the out, has opened a path for Gecko to pull us as an audience ever deeper into their intrinsically detailed and fantastic, finely tuned worlds. 

Made up of eight incredible performers, all of whom deliver a faultless and energetic performance, The Wedding explores the complexities of contracts and unravels human nature before our eyes when it comes to commitments, using ‘weddings’ as a social metaphor for the tension within communities. Rather brilliantly, we’re not spoonfed how to feel, like many forms of entertainment nowadays, instead invited to pull the meaning together ourselves. This show is a mesmerising creation of a dream-like dystopian world in which people get spat onto the stage after hurtling down a green tunnel, into a pile of teddy bears – perhaps a reference to saying goodbye to childhood - as the contract of life begins as each is presented with a wedding dress to put on. From there, we are continuously flung into varying action with a rollercoaster ride of ever-changing patterns, imagery, relationships and characters. 

As if in a dream, we encounter: no-faced people on top of a wedding cake devouring food, the hustle and bustle of the office, floating objects, wedding gowns, briefcases, flashing lights, confession-like backlit boxes and a circadian rhythm of movement and invention, that it is impossible to ever feel bored. Amit Lahav and the creative team behind this production - made up of devising performers, production, and technical teams, hauntingly brilliantly sound by Dave Price and many others who I’m sure have contributed over the years- make for a collaboration like no other. Gecko once again has carefully crafted a production to an extraordinary level for us all to stew upon its meaning and leave the theatre deep in thought, moved by all we’ve let sink in.

There are so many highlight moments within this show, one being where the saying ‘living out of a suitcase’ seems to appear literally on stage, with numerous characters climbing out one by one of a suitcase to greet the audience. Gecko finds the perfect combination of comedy and emotion, easing us into a Charlie Chaplin, Mr Bean-ish moment that starts with a comical sketch and a character asking for money, to later test and tug at our heartstrings as the character's journey develops. This moment embodies everything that is standout about this company, hitting all their core methodologies of emotion, physicality, metaphor, breath and musicality.

Culturally, this show also feels extremely important. The Wedding makes you question where you stand besides others, why you’ve made those choices and how feeling trapped within your own circumstances can feel throttling. If you watch this show, irritated that you can’t understand the plot or what everyone’s saying, then you’re missing the point or raising within yourself exactly what Gecko may have intended. With language used as one of the biggest metaphors throughout, with the largest selection of different languages of any Gecko show so far, from Serbian to Cantonese, English to Georgian and more, no audience member will or should understand all the dialogue. This production is an opportunity to let go of the reins of fully understanding, letting your mind make the connections and trust your emotional senses to lead the way, over a defining narrative that normally guides us. It is in this way Gecko guides us to question how we pick ourselves apart from one another and how in a real-world setting we can be encouraged to question the contracts we’ve blindly signed to a society that doesn’t necessarily have our best interests at heart.

Of course, being a physical theatre phenomenon, dance is a huge feature of this production - perhaps more so than that of previous shows such as ‘Institute’. All eight performers - Mario Garcia Patrón Alvarez, Lucia Chocarro, Madeleine Fairminer, Vanessa Guevara Flores, Ryen Perkins-Gangnes, Saju Hari, Wai Shan Vivian Luk, Miguel Torres Umba and Dan Watson  (who absolutely deserve to be named)  give outstanding movement performances. A company so in sync with each other from start to finish, building to a final song that hits so powerfully that it received a standing ovation and encore for four rounds of bows. I believe this speaks for itself in how beautifully the work of these performers is.

Amit Lahav’s impressive career clearly continues, and Geckon are still at the top of its game 25 years on. I hope this show has a huge touring life ahead of it and many more get to see it and be inspired by this incredible work and themes of compassion, community, and self-agency. Another blindingly brilliant dystopian creation from these physical theatre industry leaders - if it so happens that this becomes your first-time seeing Gecko, consider yourself lucky, as you never forget your first Gecko production.

The Wedding plays at Sadler’s Wells East until 24th January. Tickets from https://www.sadlerswells.com/whats-on/gecko-the-wedding/

Photos by Malachy Luckie