Review: COW | DEER, Royal Court Theatre

Photo credit: Camilla Greenwell

Powerhouse creative trio Katie Mitchell, Nina Segal and Melanie Wilson have created something completely and startlingly new in the rafters of the Royal Court. Cow | Deer is an experimental sound experience, an hour of dialogue-less drama that navigates the English countryside from the perspective of a cow and a deer.

Building on their previous use of foley effects, Mitchell, Segal and sound artist Wilson push the envelope in this production exploring foley as live and very visible performance art. The explanatory cards issued to audience members at the start of the show advise us that we are welcome to close our eyes and relax into the soundscape created by the four performers but it is far too tempting to watch the onstage quartet compose their sounds, so graceful and emotive and engaging are their performances. They are not coldly disconnected from the sounds they are creating - they weave between their stations in a silent ballet and their eyes and hands convey the passionate urgency of the story experienced by the main characters - our cow and deer.

Discussing the inspiration behind the piece, the creators write in the play text about the impossibility of confronting the immensity of the climate crisis in traditional storytelling forms, of the need to extend beyond familiar human experiences of watching and listening in order to begin to fathom the unfathomable.

This production is surprisingly challenging for audience members, asked as we are to be immersed in an alien world quite stripped back and primitive compared to the familiar roar of the traffic and human chatter just outside on the streets of London. It is a strange effort of will to quieten the mind to match the pace of the cow and deer, to find a meditative space of empathy.

Through an academic lens, Cow | Deer is a charged political piece, confronting existential themes through a radical unravelling of the politics of performance itself. In a purely experiential sense, Cow | Deer is uniquely immersive and baldly, unpretentiously and beautifully animal. With no barrier of language, this production approaches a purer form of empathy and unity with the natural world.

An unforgettable experience.

***** Five stars

Reviewed by: Livvy Perrett

Cow | Deer plays at London’s Royal Court Theatre until 11 October, with further info here.