Review of Neil Waithe’s Leggo Theatre Season Finale Showcases Inventive Performances

A dazzling display of creative performances marked a thrilling close to last week’s season finale of Neil Waithe’s Leggo Theatre production. Distinct and captivating, the show drew a packed crowd, leaving only standing room at the Sage Bar & Stage, Maxwell Main Road, Christ Church.

Conducted by the Leggo Theatre company and premièring November 2024, the first season was a one-of-a-kind interactive stage play that used improvisation and audience participation to craft tales on the spot and without limits.

Last week’s final episode was a compilation of the best segments from the first season.

Chief among these fan favourite stories was a recollection of Waithe’s encounter with a green monkey as a young boy. This confrontation saw the primate sink its teeth into the young boy’s arm, leaving a mark that branded him a pariah among school peers who believed him to be a contagious monkey boy.

Quiet fury

Chanting over the rhythm of drums, Waithe narrated the tale to an enraptured audience as his younger counterpart, re-enacted by eager crowd participant and attorney Andrew Pilgrim, who tussled with a monkey – portrayed by one of the many talented Leggo cast members.

Another fan favourite was a spoken word piece titled Let We Push. In it, Waithe spoke with quiet fury as he condemned the way 13-year-old Shawnathon Chase and countless others lost their lives to gun violence.

His message was one of action, spurring on players at every level to push towards a better tomorrow.

“Whether it’s the relationship with our piece, the relationship with ourselves, we have a chance to heal, a chance to breath, just take a pause, take a breath and let we push,” he said during the performance.

With It’s A Joke Until It’s Not, the cast introduced a game show that shed light on the sexual harassment that women often face in the outside world. The improvised game show aimed to flip the tables, with a male contestant subjected to the similar jeers and catcalling.

Just a joke

As discomfort bloomed on the men’s faces, they were reminded not to take the comments so seriously, they were after all . . . just a joke.

These varying performances accentuated Waithe’s style of improvised theatre as one firmly grounded in real experiences, from the minutiae of playing as a “hardears” youth to the impact of violence in every form.

“This has been the most challenging thing I’ve ever done,” Waithe said of the show. “The challenge of balancing energies, managing energies,

caring for energies, and putting energies in the best place to succeed. It’s really challenging because we have so much talent that everybody can go and do a long one-person play.

“Sometimes it’s haphazard, sometimes the purists give me trouble, sometimes I feel bad because I want it to be more structured but however it is, it’s an effort. And drama, the word drama means to do. And we just try to do whatever we do, we try to do to the best of our ability. With our best breaths and with our best intention and our best energy,” he added.

The theatre show is a continuation of Neil Waithe’s Theatre Unbound and Man Child series which used similar concepts of improvisation and live storytelling. As his artistry evolved, the performer saw the need for community within the art space.

“I realised that everybody’s an artiste, whether dormant or active. And my thing was how do I encourage, embrace and ignite artistes to do their artistry. To pick up the thing you used to do between zero and seven and that’s dance, draw, sing, dance, just scream and laugh,” he said.

Diverse ideas

The foundation of the theatre company also afforded him the opportunity to build his very own theatre family comprising close-knit Leggo cast members whom he mentors and coaches along the way.

The collective has also opened the way for diverse ideas and stories entering real-world experiences.

“We’re searching for good and figuring out what good looks like. And figuring out all the hard questions, all the hard topics. How do we entertain, but educate and advocate for things like women’s issues, catcalling, things like gun violence. Things like artistry and lack of pay and trade union laws. Things that need to be spoken about.

“And that’s what Leggo Theatre is. How can you release the phone, release the inhibitions. Release all the hang-ups, the heartbreaks, the pain and the hurt, release and smile and have fun,” he added. (JRN)