Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
How many dreams or unfulfilled desires do you still have left in your life? One? A few? Maybe there is whole list of wishes, a whole grasping of seeds in which you hope will all germinate and take root. Every success then will be yours…life though doesn’t work that way and in amongst all those seeds you might miss the one that will flower as you chase them all. Mary Pearson explores how not to succeed, in other words how to grasp Failure.
As part of Physical Fest, once again hosted magnificently by Tmesis Theatre, Mary Pearson greets the attendees at the lobby of The Unity Theatre warmly but with that special glint in her eye that not only disarms those going to the evening performance but shakes, even surprises the audience at the physicality, the sheer abundance and graft needed to present what failure, the perceived nature that not being a success is somehow the root of letting yourself down as a human being.
From her sweeping but delicately precise dance moves in which the seeds, which had started as a neat pile in which she tested the pressure with her feet, become more and more scattered out, in a gracious pattern to begin with then with an act of pure joy to the audience becoming haphazard and unsightly. From this point there was no stopping this force of nature, getting members of the audience involved with the physical aspect, the beauty of her catwalk strut with the idea that a price on show somehow makes it more acceptable and onto her, at what may seem at first glance to be chaotic, finale which if doesn’t ring true and heartfelt with you as you are sat in the audience leaves then no room for your own personal growth.
Success is relative, however as long as you can even hold onto one seed with a passion then even at the end it should never be viewed by anyone as a failure. Mary Pearson holds onto her seed with a tight grip, a fixed idea and leaves the audience breathless with her incredible performance in Failure (And other opportunities for non-linear success)
Ian D. Hall