Mind the Gap

39658 original

Who are those people who you sit next to on the Tube? You never make eye contact. You never say a word. They could be anyone.

Lou (Marika McKennell) meets the people with whom she shares a carriage, as they scream and trap a mouse that found its way on board. For a moment, the rules of not talking and not listening are abandoned. So then she begins to think: who are these people? What lives and stories are they hiding?

Mind the Gap is a fun glance into the imagined lives of strangers. The work take a slightly judgmental view on travelling in such shared quarters, but does so in a production that is filled with humour, and which that suggests our lives might all be a little better if we approached the world with a bit of imagination – and abandoned some of the rules.

While everyone in the company is strong, McKennell, also co-writer of the work with Poppy Damon, is a highlight. Her Lou carries the show: quiet and reserved, nerves bottled up until she explodes. However, it's when McKennell’s spoken-word poetry comes together over the music of Irish beatboxing vice champion, Cull, that the work is at its most invigorating.