Follow The Signs is an original piece of fully BSL-integrated hip-hop gig theatre that lets the audience into writer and performer Chris Fonseca’s world as a Black Deaf man in a racist hearing world.

Underscored by Yacoub Didi’s original music, Chris shares with warmth, clarity and humour, the barriers and struggles of navigating the world but also some of the benefits which allow him to celebrate his Deafness as a core part of his identity.

Chris is accompanied onstage by co-writer and director Harry Jardine, a white man who as an interpreter speaks for Chris - just one of the many tensions and contradictions that Follow The Signs explores. Raphaella Julien picks up this theme, describing fluently and eloquently the struggles of finding her place in the world as an oral Deaf mixed-race woman.

DJ Gaia Ahuja completes the cast who collectively through their passionate performance, verve, and charm creates a welcoming and supportive space to unpick the profound barriers preventing Deaf, Black and mixed-race people from being included, represented and valued in society. 

Fonseca and Jardine’s show is pure distilled theatre – bringing together and speaking to hearing and Deaf audiences with captions, live interpreting, music, dap, dance and sign. A true lesson on the importance of intersectionality.

Lighting design by Simeon Miller and video and caption design by Rachel Sampley lend the finishing touches to this slick show, bolstering the confident performances with evocative visuals.

Follow The Signs is infectious fun – thought-provoking, charming, funny and poignant.

Only playing at the Soho Theatre until this Saturday, we have to cross everything to hope that this show has a fruitful future life beyond this run. Completely unmissable.

***** Five stars

Reviewed by: Livvy Perrett

Tickets for Follow The Signs can be purchased here.