With an exceptional performance from Kate Webster, The Shop for Mortals and All Fools is a profoundly affecting piece from Director Vinicius Salles
Photo: James Lawson
This review contains mild spoilers for the contents of The Shop For Mortals and All Fools.
The Shop For Mortals and All Fools is the latest show from director Vinicius Salles. An immersive, site-specific retelling of The Bacchae by Euripides, the show is told from the perspective of Agave - the mother of Pentheus and aunt of Dionysus - as the god of wine and ecstasy returns to Thebes to claim his divine right.
The Bacchae is having quite the moment within London's immersive scene right now, with Sleepwalk Immersive's retelling of the story coming to Hoxton Hall in March. While both shows are based on the same text, their approaches to adapting it differ in some key ways.
Set within an antique shop in an unnamed English village, shopkeeper Agatha (Agave, played by Kate Webster) has invited a small audience of 10 people to preview the shop's latest collection. While not every item may be for sale, they all have their own story to tell, and nearly all of them lead back to their nephew Dominic's (Dionysus) return to the village.
Photo: James Lawson
By way of introduction, visitors are invited to explore this collection and remove the sticker alongside an item of their choosing if they think it may contain a hidden coin gifted by the Gods. With information on each item provided in a catalogue, visitors are free to browse the collection and make their own decisions.
While it's an engaging beginning to the show, the combination of low light within the space and small font size makes it a challenge to make an informed decision, with most visitors settling on any available sticker they come across after a few moments. The consequences of these decisions aren't immediately clear but become important later on for one audience member.
Photo: James Lawson
Slowly unfolding over the next 45 minutes, Agatha recounts the tale of growing up in the brothel overlooking the village where she and The Vixens would worship Cybele, the goddess of fertility. She speaks of her sister falling pregnant and giving birth to a child that the villagers believed to be half human, half God, and her marriage to the man who would become Pastor. As the years passed, she would indulge more and more in drinking to speed up the passage of time, until one day a newspaper headline stating 'Banished God Returns' changed the trajectory of her life.
Those familiar with The Bacchae will know the next part of this story. With Dominic's return heralding the village's descent into frenzy, Agatha is drawn into the woods and joins the crowds of women deep in ritualistic worship of the newly returned God. It's a choice that later leads to the death of Preston (Pentheus) at the hands of his mother, who decapitates him while believing him to be a lion.
Photo: James Lawson
Within the show's space, Kate Webster has a commanding presence. Given the experience both Salles and Webster have as choreographers, it's little surprise that Agatha's movement throughout the space is utterly enthralling. Constantly shifting and contorting as she traverses the room, Webster injects every scene with a wonderfully fluid sense of self. Alongside this, her performance of the show's text is exceptional, ranking up there with some of the best we've ever seen in an immersive, site-specific show.
While all of Agatha's interactions with the audience are fairly light, there are select moments where she interacts directly with them. Some of the sustained eye contact between Agatha and audience members has a terrifying menace to it, and smaller interactions inviting the audience to scatter bark across the space's central table create a wonderful visual to go alongside her descent deeper into the woods outside the village. Midway through the show, the whisper of a prophecy is shared with one audience member.
Photo: James Lawson
By the conclusion of The Shop for Mortals and All Fools, Agatha's feelings are clear. She's been shaken by her retelling of past events, and she holds the village's men responsible. Drinking numbs the pain and represses her memories, but the objects she holds onto still have great meaning. For one audience member, their earlier choice of which artefact to claim as their own will reveal an even deeper meaning, but for the rest of us, our time in the shop is over.
The Shop For Mortals and Fools is an exceptionally well-crafted piece of immersive, site-specific theatre. Tickets for the current run at Stanley Arts are sold out, but here's hoping the shop's opening hours are soon extended so more people can hear Agatha's story first-hand.
★★★★½
The Shop for Mortals and All Fools runs at Stanley Arts until 1st March 2025. Tickets are priced from £20.00. To find out more about the show and to book tickets, visit stanleyarts.org