Smack That (a conversation), Ovalhouse, review

Six survivors of prolonged physical and psychological violence top up your cider cup, compliment you on your jacket and check you know how to play pass-the-parcel. Smack That (a conversation)‘s atmosphere – ingenuous, convivial, kind – is disconcerting at first. But then it makes total sense. A ‘pity party’, this ain’t.

Rhiannon Faith’s heuristic, tricksy and – despite its brightly coloured balloons – valiantly unembellished dance-theatre piece raises awareness both about the prevalence and routes out of domestic abuse, and celebrates the resilience of those who manage to escape it.

The performers (half of whom are professional dancers, all of whom have survived sustained abuse themselves) hurl themselves at the floor, pick each other off and repeat. Purposefully messy, visceral and occasionally electrifying movement sequences are combined with moments of verbatim text – interviews with anonymous women – and participatory theatre elements to unpack and destabilise the taboo of remaining silent about what happens behind closed doors.

Gut-wrenching statistics about the failure of Downing Street to give systematic coercion the attention equivalent to its ubiquity are interwoven with text- and movement-based accounts, and carefully positioned ‘party games’ (all as slippery as the next) begin to open up the ‘conversation’ to include ourselves. What’s impressive, and irrefutably important, is that the audience know exactly what they are letting themselves in for when these participatory segments begin.