A pub can be more than a place one goes to simply get a drink; it is a place to meet loved ones or strangers, to listen to music, experience a collective energy or to feel connected to people while sitting alone nursing a pint. Maybe after a few, you find yourself opening up to a stranger about your day, maybe more. For many, a pub is a community and a place of familiarity that eases the burdens carried with us day to day. This is the community that the Rhiannon Faith Company has brought to the Barbican with the world premiere of their latest dance theatre work, Lay Down Your Burdens.

Director and choreographer Rhiannon Faith, together with six devising performers (Dominic Coffey, Shelley Eva Haden, Donald Hutera, Sam Ford, Finetta Sidgwick, Sara Turner and two devising musicians Anna Clock and India Merrett), have produced a work that holds space for those who are in need for a trip to the pub, and designer Noemi Daboczi with the rest of the creative team have transformed the Pit theatre, almost literally, into one.

Set on a thrust stage, the audience have the choice to sit in more traditional seats around the perimeter of the playing space or closer to the action on bar tables and stools. Do be wary though, the closer you sit, the more likely you will be included in the voluntary (although we would argue not so voluntary!) audience participation. In the middle of the space is a traditional looking British bar and behind it some booths with curtains that retract and close through the performance.

The landlady is a middle aged woman named Sarah who is warm but stern when needed and someone you will probably feel like you have met before. She takes pride in her collective of regular patrons who frequent the pub most days and welcomes their troubles as much as their joy. As the night unfolds, shots and daiquiris are had while tears are shed as each character gradually opens up about their worries, trauma, as well as their loves and descriptions of what softness means to them. This is all done through expressions of dance, poetry and shared dialogs.

Faith works with an intention to make socially conscious theatre and Lay Down Your Burdens was developed using conversations had with communities, and real-life experiences of the company. Each character is familiar or relatable with woes such as parental neglect, fear for the future or disobeying bodies. There is power and simplicity in this idea. It takes the human condition for what it is and accepts it. There is a catharsis achieved within the concept offered.

However, where Lay Down Your Burdens falls short is by letting the work tip into overly sentimental territory that does a disservice to the nuance and duplicity of each characters experiences as they navigate between moments of pain, hope and love.

The strongest moments are in the physical expressions of the above. The lyrical and emotive movements contrasted to and playing with the setting of a traditional pub is effective. So much is said through the quality of the performers bodies. Much of the text, however, which tags on before or after the movement, oversimplifies these expressions and tries to explain the physical in a less sophisticated way.

The exception to this is during a solo moment that is repeated throughout the piece performed by Shelley Eva Haden. She plays an overworked but immaculately presented lawyer who is holding onto childhood drama. Her text and movement play together in an impressive and oddly grotesque way as she processes her past in a disjointed monologue structured as a dictated document. Overall though, the integration of movement and text sits too far apart.

Live music on stage from the cello and violin, composed by John Victor, offers moments of comfort and sound designer Anna Clock interjects this with energy from tacky pop hits and moments of more warped ambiance which integrate well within the shifting and evolving stories of the patrons.

The promise of audience interaction that is given at the top of the show is used as a way to give the audience a chance to feel part of the community. Unfortunately, this feels little forced and intrusive at times for most people except the brave few.

Despite inconsistency’s and the need for trust in the work’s abstract expressive power, there is much to admire within the concept of being invited to observe a micro world that’s somehow familiar in Lay Down your Burdens. There is room for the work to develop and find a deeper connection to text and possibly even lose some of it, but the message of community is strong.

After the bell for last drinks rings and you are left with an empty glass, what do you do? What are you left with? The joy that comes from knowing you have somewhere to go tomorrow maybe.

*** Three stars

Reviewed by: Stephanie Oszstreicher

Lay Down Your Burdens plays at the Barbican Centre until 25 November, with further information here.