Review: LOOK, NO HANDS - Pleasance Theatre (Online)

Written and performed as a one-woman show by Lila Clements, Look, No Hands focuses on her own traumatic near-death cycling accident in 2010, and re-evaluating her life from that moment onwards.

There is obviously a life long passion with cycling, which Clements relives in her joyful tales of learning to ride her bike with her Father and the feeling of realising that she was doing it all on her own for the first time, as she looked behind to see him waving at her from a distance.  The title of the play coming from this moment, from the moment of freedom riding down a hill with your arms outstretched.

This is what the play is about.  How do we regain this freedom as an adult?  Does it take a traumatic experience to enable us to acknowledge that this is what needs to happen?

With the horrific notion that her clothes had been cut off in the hospital and that she had suffered a seizure and urinary incontinence on crash impact, these are topics that luckily most of us have not experienced, but probably think about from time to time, so can easily relate and empathise with.

Directed by Anna Ryder, we ask ourselves: How does an accident like this change your life?  What would you do if you came face to face with the person that had caused it?

Clements observes and discusses how having to pause your life for the first time in years effects your perspectives and asks, How do we tell our own story, in our own words?

This piece incites us to ask questions of ourselves and assess how we live our lives now and how we can make things better and regain our freedom, before we find ourselves forced to make the changes. 

**** Four stars 

Reviewed by: Rachel Louise Martin

Look, No Hands is available to watch via stream.theatre from 27 September - 10 October, and on demand from 11 October - 7 November.