They Only Come at Night

Sorry, I know some of you struggle to keep up when I have one of my content-splurging days. Ah well.

Anyway. Here is my review of the rather-wonderful performance I went to in Bradford late last night.

I knew I was in for a treat when the “car lift” turned out to be a man in a car, giving the audience a lift. Well, it was a car park after all. A multistorey, which the car went around and around from bottom to top, where we were ejected and seized by a sweaty and urgent young man, who gabbled about the rules. Something about not trying to outrun them, because they were faster than us.

I never did find out who “they” were, but I’m not sure it matters.

The top floor of Hall Ings car park in Bradford was full of smoke, and strobe lighting, and monologues in headphones, and plastic sheeting which billowed atmospherically while creepy images were projected onto it. Black-clad figures ran and stunt-rolled past, and there was shouting from somewhere out back. Part of the show? I don’t know.

At one point I was standing on a twig, and the twig moved. I looked down at my feet. Don’t be silly, I thought. But it moved again, so I turned, and the man - standing inches behind me, and I never knew - whispered in my ear, then ran off. I shrieked, loudly.

I liked that bit. And I liked the bit at the end, with the handful of salt and the scary woman in the shadows and the man, grabbing me urgently and pulling me away.

But the best part of this show came afterwards, as I sat in my car looking at an almost-full moon behind dramatic clouds, and everything I heard, saw and smelt seemed to be part of the performance. I like the idea of a piece which isn’t an experience so much as a seed, which plants itself and then grows through your senses even as it chucks you back out in the world.

And I wasn’t even stoned.

I haven’t a clue what it was about. I’m glad we were given the transcripts and I enjoyed reading them - they were well-written monologues about alienation, fear and strangeness. But it did feel like many random ideas, connected only loosely. There was a dead body, and maybe some ghostly dogs. But who cares? I enjoyed myself.