Review: We Are Ian, Tobacco Factory Theatres

There are parallels to be drawn between 1989 and 2017. Back then the UK was polarised under Thatcher’s Tory rule, while over in the US another inexperienced president – actor-turned-politician Ronald Reagan –was at the helm.

But crucially, 80s kids had acid house, while for Millennials, there’s no equivalent subversive youth movement to cling onto when the world gets weird.

This is the premise of In Bed With My Brother’s excellent We Are Ian. Driving the show is real speech recorded with 46-year-old ex-DJ and painter and decorator Ian, who was a raver in Manchester at the height of the acid house movement.

“I feel sorry for you… you’ve got fuck all,” says Ian’s disembodied voice, speaking through a glowing lightbulb in an otherwise bare stage, to three eager, white-overall-clad, light-up-trainer-sporting twentysomethings.

Ian’s memories are enacted through a mixture of dance, lip-syncing and mime against an invigorating soundscape of house beats that overlap with his speech (almost the only dialogue in the play) and media projected on the wall.

Nora Alexander, Dora Lynn and Kat Cory, the trio who make up In Bed With My Brother, are performance artists at their best. They unify the various elements of their show into something experiential, imaginative and original.

The raw material of Ian’s interview is gold dust. But the clever idea of disorientated Millennials looking to the previous youth generation for guidance brings the show bang up to date.

Acid house music is an easy hit with the audience; classic tracks eliciting whoops of delight. But In Bed With My Brother want more than a simple nostalgia party (admittedly, since Alexander, Lynn and Cory are all 90s babies, this would always have been unlikely.)

The show takes us through the drug-fuelled highs of underground parties and the inevitable low when it was all over. Ian’s recall of “brown biscuits” provokes a very funny scene where the Millennials, faces distorted with confusion and fear, try eating a pack of what looks like ginger snaps.

The second half of the hour-long play gets more political: the acid house movement took on new meaning when it attracted the attention of Thatcher’s government, which began raiding illegal raves.

Was getting off your head in an old warehouse political activism, as the show suggests? Personally I’m not convinced. The most poignant theme explored here is that unavoidable threat to youth culture – growing up. “It’s shit,” says Ian, who at one moment seems to be choking up as he relives his halcyon days.

The show’s climax sees the performers engaged in a protracted raving routine, frantically hot-potato-ing and cold-spaghetti-ing in front of a montage of political footage from 1989 to 2017. As they become more and more exhausted the scene seems to ask: can they keep it up? And is it OK to just keep raving and shut out the world?

Theatre is often obsessed with being contemporary: We Are Ian marries two generations’ experiences together in a stunning form that’s as relevant as anything you’ll see on stage.

We Are Ian was at Tobacco Factory Theatres from Thursday, March  to Saturday, March 4. For the theatre’s upcoming programme, visit www.tobaccofactorytheatres.com/whats-on

Pic: Matt Austin