Traverse Theatre
Four stars
It begins, as most true crime podcasts do, with a mystery in Malaika Kegode’s new play. That mystery is about a young musician called Ben, who disappears while staying in a converted shed in a rural outback where he is recording an album for the girlfriend who dumped him. The eccentric old lady called Bridget Brock who runs the AirBnB the shed has become has songs and stories of her own. When Ben vanishes, however, the songs stop.
A decade on, and wannabe documentary maker Meles is looking for an outlet to call her own. With her ailing mother Dora to tend to, Meles’ private investigations lead her down the garden path where little creatures come out to play after dark.
The key here in Jenny Davies’ elegiac production is in the telling. With Kegode herself at the helm as the Storyteller, she leads us through assorted lost recordings and voices from the past by way of a laptop and some vocal manipulations worthy of Laurie Anderson.
This is accompanied by a cracked slowcore folk score composed and played live by guitarist Joe Williams and bassist Beth Roberts, who play from inside a booth where at one point Meles becomes a ghost in the machine alongside the voices captured on tape.
This is brought into life in this Theatre Royal Plymouth production in association with Bristol Old Vic by sound designer Jack Drewry as a kind of sonic poetry to complement Kegode and Meles’ story.
The result is a twenty-first century fusion of oral storytelling, 1970s folk horror and the sort of sound led narrative that would stand alone on online art radio station Resonance FM or some of Radio Three’s more adventurous output.
Beyond its fantastical nature, there is much in the show’s delivery that speaks movingly about loss, letting go and holding on to a much bigger past than your own where stories hide in other people’s private places waiting to be told.
Until 30 Aug, various times.
The Herald, August 9th 2026
ends
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