Octopolis – Hampstead Theatre, Downstairs – Saturday 14th October 2023

(Rated 4/5) Octopolis is a beautiful little play jam-packed with ideas, concepts, observations, science, philosophy, psychology, religion, metaphor, emotions, detachments and attachments. It explores human-human and octopus-human relationships and the intellectual capacity and potential scope of awareness and consciousness of both animals. Could an octopus believe in God? Is it possible for octopus’ consciousness and intelligence to in fact develop beyond that of a human. And the most beautiful aspect of it for me; sixteen limbs dancing to David Bowie!

George – Jemma Redgrave – is a behavioural biologist studying Frances, the Octopus – herself in a screen at the back of the stage – who changes colour and ‘form’ according to the ‘action’ being demonstrated or to which she is responding. George has recently lost her husband – they worked together studying and interacting with Frances. Harry – Ewan Miller – invades George and Frances’ bubble together. He is an anthropologist assigned by the university to study them both. From George’s point of view, he is not welcome. Does that change? Do she and Frances come to accept him? I’ll let writer Marek Horn take over the explanation at this point as I couldn’t possibly explain it any better!: “The play follows a behavioural biologist and an anthropologist; both professional practitioners of close observation. They watch the octopus and each other, and they watch each other watch the octopus. Over the course of this watching, both George and Harry share their observations about the other with the audience and, in so doing, reveal far more about themselves than they might have intended. It is, then, a play about competing subjectivities and the illusion of objectivity. It’s about trying to remain detached and getting sucked in all the same. In this way, the characters’ emotional trajectories and their professional preoccupations feed each other.”

Another aspect of this I love, not quite mentioned by Marek, but maybe just obvious in any case, is we the audience and Frances the octopus, are also of course making our own observations and responding to the interactions on stage from our own ‘stuff’ – to use a very lay psychological term! My theatre companion and I had our own individual wishes for the outcome for the characters and observations of how they came across, which didn’t quite match up! Amusingly we’d been discussing our equally individual observations on ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ partnerships earlier in the afternoon and found those didn’t always match up either. Observations are always inevitably subjective, however objective we are trying to be and I feel in something that engages our emotional and intellectual capacities, inevitably clouded by our own ‘issues’ – to use a less lay, slightly more professional psychological term 😉 (Me and my theatre companion’s issues matched when we couldn’t bring ourselves to go say ‘Hi’ to, and get a selfie with, a certain Sam Ryder – whom we saw after our lunch together - and then experienced Ryder-regret for the rest of the afternoon lol.)

Writer Marek also explains in an interview with producer Greg Ripley-Duggan, that his script started much longer (100 minutes in length in the final edit), and he had to pare it down after leaving it for a time to be able to maybe get a fresh and perhaps more objective view on it. That reminded me of a technique used in psychotherapy to freely write everything you might want to express to someone without any self-editing as you go along, and then later select what you may want to actually say to them! A way of processing and getting to the core of your ideas, loves, challenges and wishes. For some audience members, I imagine it was still a little too concept-packed, and for others, I imagine there may well be a curiosity as to what got lost in the editing process. I noticed one reviewer seems to have missed the point of the play. The human characters – at least in the outset – speak in observations on each other – using a description of the other’s actions and he/she said. I took this to be their scientific observations – again as though they were writing a paper on their ‘experiments’. This ‘reduces’ as they become more involved with each other. I thought it a brilliant use of dialogue to illustrate just one aspect of the nature of the play. Just as designer Anisha Fields uses the effects resulting from the movements or emotion or environment triggered colour changes to illustrate the presence of Frances.

Octopolis is directed by Ed Madden and also has a movement and intimacy director Angela Gasparretto. Both did a brilliant job, in the wonderfully intimate space of ‘Hampstead Downstairs’. The audience really couldn’t be any closer to the performers and that only adds to the power of the experience with them through the play.

I’ve docked a mark just because I wonder if it’s a little too heady and not enough hearty in its balance, but yet again that is of course a subjective view… and being heady and detached and maybe trying to avoid being more hearty and attached, is very important to the whole play concept and progression. Maybe my mark docking has more to do with not being able to grasp everything in one attendance of it, but that just argues for going to see it again! I would recommend going to see it at least once 😊 Octopolis – Review by TheRestrictedReviewer © 2023