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Review: WEER (Soho Theatre Walthamstow)

Review by Dan Sinclair


⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️


The last decade has given us a handful of theatre openings that have now become sell-out mainstays of the West End: Soho Place, the new King’s Head Theatre, The Bridge Theatre and now the biggest and pinkest of them all, Soho Theatre Walthamstow. Partnered up with it’s home in Dean Street, the brand new venue is a renovation of the previously left to rot 186 Hoe Street, formerly an Art Deco Granada cinema. Soho Theatre have made a seismic move here, it is one of the most beautiful theatre’s I have ever seen, the West End hasn’t got a scratch on this design, and the venue makes it’s artistic intentions clear, opening the space with WEER, a one-woman clowning show/meltdown by Natalie Palamides.


WEER tells the relationship epic of Mark and Christina, two generic and attractive 20-somethings who happen to be two halves of the same body, split down the middle of Natalie Palamides… perhaps they’re… soul mates. It’s New Year's Eve 1999, and as it hits Y2K, Christina finally breaks up with Mark, she starts the car, and within minutes, comes off the road. Bleeding out on the roadside, we are taken through the entire history of them. There’s the meet-cute, the first kiss (soundtracked of course by The Cranberries), the highs and the lows. It manages to hit every beat of the 90s/00s romcom, it’s knowing, intelligent, but also downright menacing.



A regular feature on the popular late-night cabaret act that once in a blue moon graces the Soho Theatre, Stamptown, Natalie Palamides is a seasoned clowning expert. She is top of her game and is doing it like nobody else. WEER is a masterfully refined and downright hilarious 85 minutes. She digs at pockets of energy that no normal human being possesses, but her comedy is genuinely radical. It’s out there, but not in a way that looks down the rims of its glasses and tells you, ‘don’t worry, if you don’t find it funny, you just don’t get it.’ Shut up. Natalie Palamides is radical in her comedy because she goes right back to the roots. It’s outrageous, messy and wild, she tears around the stage and the auditorium (spoilers: audience interaction) like a child who wants to make a penis joke and destroy their parents living room with a water pistol. 


The skill of Natalie Palamides is her ability to dance on the edge of offence, it’s a knowing blast back to the comedy of the early 00s. It’s grotesque, over-the-top, there’s nudity, screaming, vomit, blood, other bodily fluids that don’t make the edit (but use your imagination), and a thousand jokes that at a glance would be grounds for cancellation. But throughout, it manages to hit on a few genuine and disturbing points. The two halves are clearly, as it progresses, caught up in a violent and destructive relationship - both cheating, both trashy, and both controlling. As Palamides flips manically between the two, she creates some genuinely disturbing (but still hilarious) moments. It’s as if Virginia Woolf wrote an American Pie movie.



She has an exceptional ability to make the complex look simple, and the simple look complex. As we first flash back to 1996, we barrel through the meet-cute. Mark stomps along, briefcase in hand and is splashed by cars going past, whilst simultaneously, Christina, in her Anne Hathaway trenchcoat, collides head first into a flower stand. Orange juice flies, they scream and land into each other's arms. It’s like watching Buster Keaton on speed, physical gags and props are timed to perfection, made to look slapdash and messy, but everything is just so. Natalie Palamides is a genius.


By the end of the show, the stage is a bombsite, and if you want to apply some deeper meaning to it, I’m sure the metaphor for the relationship is just within your reach. There’s something about Natalie Palamides that just warms your soul; she takes you on an 85-minute ride through her head, and it’s right class. It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen, even for those who like to add to their Hinge bio that they ‘like clowning’, it’s a standout.


After the first performance at this, the opening of Soho Theatre Walthamstow, the entire audience leapt to their feet in truly one of the most springy standing ovations I’ve ever seen. Palamides reminds us what this place is for: to give artists who are used to only playing the small rooms the chance to feel this one. The most exciting new opening in a LONG time, it is our responsibility to keep this beautiful theatre packed and supported, and if they programmed WEER for a 10-year run, I have no doubt it would be rammed for 10 long years. 


WEER is playing at the Soho Theatre Walthamstow until May 10th.



Photos by Harry Elletson

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