It took a while to figure out quite what was going on, and I’m not sure the somewhat disembodied voice both bookmarking the show and speaking in between three distinct monologues did much, if anything, to help. Dystopia is considerably more popular in theatrical circles than utopia – by default, there’s far more dramatic tension in the former, and even in pantomime, where they all live happily ever after, there’s usually an element of triumph over adversity. Here, the world as we know it appears to have ended, and the narrator, apparently called Bacterium (James Walsh), is telling whoever his audience is about his findings. But given the world is meant to have ended, I’m really not sure who he was ‘really’ talking to.
Three other characters appear, one at a time, to tell their stories. The connecting narratives didn’t really work for me: rather than placing some context to the stories, they seemed to be talking about another world altogether. The imagination ran wild, which would have been fine for a sci-fi play, except this wasn’t billed as one. Mind you, the last of the stories, told by Amanda (Karinna de Simone) was broadly similar to the 2011 science fiction motion picture Perfect Sense, in which people had their sensory perceptions taken away from them. To be fair, Amanda does at least lose her senses in a different order, but even so…
With just a bed at the centre of the stage and no other set pieces, it came as a bit of a surprise to discover Luiz Guilherme (Diego Zozaya) wasn’t in a hospital bed waiting for heaven, or hell, or some other kind of afterlife, or none at all, but was having an out of body experience having been in a road traffic incident. Or maybe he was in a bed and had gone more than a bit delirious. His reflections on dying an unexpected death said something about his character: let’s just say this wasn’t someone who wanted to go quietly.
Moments of dark humour punctuate each of the monologues – Katherine Lyle’s Walkiria asks herself, for instance, why she agreed to do ‘this’ in the first place, ‘this’ being participating in a long-distance running event. Hers was, for me, the most enjoyable of the monologues. It was wide-ranging and came across as a stream of consciousness rather than a structured storyline. The zany randomness was strangely compelling. Overall, there was some food for thought in this mixed bag of both the sublime and the ridiculous.
Review by Chris Omaweng
December 31st. São Silvestre. In the scorching heat of São Paulo, a woman pushes her body to the limit, desperate to finish a 15k race.
A car crash. A man and his Mustang become one as he fights to hold on to life.
Europe. A foreign housewife begins to lose her senses — slowly, quietly, irreversibly.
Fluxorama is a Brazilian play by award-winning playwright Jô Bilac. Told through three powerful monologues, this bold and engaging work brings together three intimate stories of people pushed to their physical and psychological limits.
CAST
Walkiria: Katherine Lyle
Luiz Guilherme: Diego Zozaya
Amanda: Karinna de Simone
Bacterium: James Walsh
CREATIVES
Written by Jô Bilac
Directed by Rebeca Romeo
Movement Director: Rebeca Romeo
Scenic & Costume Design: Alice Edgar
Produced by Karinna De Simone and Madeleine Bloxam
Co-produced by Elissa Gerrand | WVFRM
FLUXORAMA
Riverside Studios
3 to 5 August 2026
