Sam Ward
YESYESNONO
HOME, Manchester
June 7-10, 2023. 1 hr 5 mins
There’s not a lot I can tell you about We Were Promised Honey! without spoiling it for everyone. The following may help – but don’t blame me if it turns out different for you.
It’s a one-man show. Sam Ward is the writer and sole professional performer, and how things go on any particular night will depend on the response he gets from members of his audience. They call it “voluntary audience participation”. That’s not just reacting; it includes him getting people to do some of the work for him.
The title doesn’t really tell you anything: the tagline “This is a show about the future” and related explanations – “the future of the audience… what will happen in the minutes, centuries, millennia after the end of this show”, for instance – are only a part of it.
You’ve got a kind of surreal dystopian futurism (the same every time, as there is a published text). In Sam’s view, life, the universe and everything all end badly. Best make the most of the moment.
It’s been called apocalyptic, and we’re invited to float into a world of fantasy story-telling which is very much Sam’s own. Not mine, but there you go. At least it raises the question of whether life has a meaning (and, being a Christian, I think it really has).
Technically it’s excellent: produced by Rhian Davies, sound design by Carmel Smickersgill, lighting design by David Doyle, additional direction by Atri Banerjee.
More info and tickets here
