STOREHOUSE

Deptford Storehouse

★★★½

“a multifaceted and engaging experience”

In a Deptford warehouse that was once the paper store for London’s newspaper industry, Storehouse (created by Liana Patarkatsishvili) is an immersive theatre production that questions the role of the internet and the twenty-four-hour news cycle in shaping our reality and the changing relationship between facts, news, and opinion.

The journey begins outside with a glass of sparkling wine and a paper guide that explains the premise: in 1983, at the birth of the internet, a group of visionaries opened the Storehouse, intending to convert all human data into binary code and which could then be catalogued, with the intention of collating it all on the First of January 2025. This moment, termed the Great Aggregation, would lead to the discovery of a universal, liberatory truth. We enter after the failure of this project.

Sorted into rooms to begin the experience, we are tasked with helping the employees of Storehouse – who have not left since 1983 – resolve the issue and proceed with the Great Aggregation. Passing through the doors into the cavernous warehouse we enter a low, cool space punctuated with columns, and from there into a waiting room. From this point onwards the performance incorporates everything from oaths and discussions to fortune cookies and votes, creating a multifaceted and engaging experience.

The actors we encounter along the way are all excellent. Fully embracing the retro 1980s environment, they walk us through the Storehouse’s collection, assessment and shelving processes while sharing their backstories and professional grievances – and dancing to Karma Chameleon whenever it plays over the Tannoy. Special mention goes to the Zachary Pang who guided our group through the maze of the Storehouse with aplomb. They are supported by a stellar cast of voice actors, that appear in video or audio: Toby Jones, Meera Syal, Kathryn Hunter and Billy Howle.

The sprawling staging (production designer Alice Helps), littered with 80s technology, and overgrown with a mossy, fungal-like substance, transports the audience to a strange – but strangely familiar – world, even down to the level of smells which permeate the rooms, bringing us further into the experience. The clothes (Julie Belinda Landau) are also fantastic, all silk shirts, braces and big shoulder pads, conjuring a moment of time frozen from the recent past.

Without wanting to give too much away, as I think going in cold enhances the experience, the structure of the show reflects its content, with participants invited to interact with one another, before, during and after the performance. There are multiple moments for a complementary drink, and I can say that the non-alcoholic cocktails are amazing. Conversation between strangers is encouraged: ‘a friend may be waiting behind a stranger’s face’, as we try together to understand our contemporary reality.

While I felt that the message was not groundbreaking, Storehouse was a very enjoyable and different experience and would be a gripping and provocative way to spend an evening with friends, or indeed to meet new people, re-focusing us on the importance of real-life, interpersonal connections, however fleeting. Ending on the deck of a free bar, looking across the Thames to Canary Wharf, I couldn’t help but think of the relationships between the centres of global economic power and the information ecosystems that help uphold them, Storehouse’s setting offering a final opportunity to consider its message.

STOREHOUSE

Deptford Storehouse

Reviewed on 11th June 2025

by Rob Tomlinson

Photography by Helen Murray

Recently reviewed by Rob:

STOREHOUSE | ★★★★★ | June 2025

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SEVEN DAYS IN THE LIFE OF SIMON LABROSSE | ★★★½ | WHITE BEAR THEATRE | October 2024

JULIUS CAESAR | ★★★ | SOUTHWARK PLAYHOUSE BOROUGH | September 2024

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STOREHOUSE

★★★★

“Vaguely Gothic, but down to earth; a touch of the supernatural brushing against domestic tragedy”

A crackling wail, somewhere between a synthesized didgeridoo and a death rattle, rises from the red earth, swelling into an anguished crescendo while three nameless women hiss with venom, spitting bitter fear and loathing at a corpse we cannot see. The mother and two daughters move and speak in staccato, jarring rhythms; locked in their state of shock and disbelief, dread and relief. The lifeless body is their husband and father, who gasped his last with a bullet through the neck.

This is not going to be comfortable viewing. Angus Cerini’s “The Bleeding Tree” is a hard-hitting murder ballad, poetic in its delivery yet full of raw rage. Mariah Gale is the mother while Elizabeth Dulau and Alexandra Jensen play the daughters, interchangeable and often indistinguishable from each other. The emotional power is impressive as they sway between culpability and victimhood. Their abuser, now lifeless on the ground, still torments them.

The one flaw in this otherwise impeccable hour-long play is that we are never sure whose side we are on. But then maybe that is the whole point of Cerini’s writing. The lines between the abused and the abuser become blurred. We never learn the full extent or true nature of the suffering caused by the deceased, but we are stealthily led to believe his end is justified. Yet somehow, we are not asked to judge. We are witnesses but not the jury.

Ali Hunter’s atmospheric lighting places the action in an eternal twilight. Jasmine Swan’s simple setting cleverly conveys the internal claustrophobia of these characters while also evoking the bleak terracotta backdrop of the Outback where further perils may lie. A knock at the door causes panic. The women ripple in unison as their savage secret is in danger of being discovered by their neighbours. Gale, Dulau and Jensen deftly switch into the roles of the outsiders; Mr Jones and Mrs Smith, and the postman-come-policeman who feed them with alibis and cover-ups. The beautifully flowing dialogue belies the complex issues bubbling underneath. Many a blind eye is being turned. Yet it seems that the events that led to this bloody conclusion were also equally ignored by those that perhaps should have seen it coming.

Sophie Drake’s minimal staging allows the cast to focus on the crucial and radical text. We learn what ‘The Bleeding Tree’ of the play’s title refers to, and it is quite harrowing. The protagonists may be left with mixed feelings eating away at them, from the inside out, but that is nothing compared to the literal fate of the decomposing body of evidence before them that needs to be disposed of.

“The Bleeding Tree” forces us to face important questions. Instead of offering answers it dresses them in atmospheric layers of theatricality. The result is something quite extraordinary. Vaguely Gothic, but down to earth; a touch of the supernatural brushing against domestic tragedy. Cerini writes with the pen of a poet but the mind of a crime writer. A thrilling combination that, combined with the excellent performances, is a theatrical experience that makes us look at its extreme subject matter in a new light.

STOREHOUSE

Deptford Storehouse

★★★½

“a multifaceted and engaging experience”

STOREHOUSE

Deptford Storehouse

Reviewed on 11th June 2025

by Rob Tomlinson

Photography by Helen Murray

Recently reviewed by Rob:

STOREHOUSE

STOREHOUSE

STOREHOUSE

THE BLEEDING TREE at Southwark Playhouse Borough

★★★★

“Vaguely Gothic, but down to earth; a touch of the supernatural brushing against domestic tragedy”

THE BLEEDING TREE at Southwark Playhouse Borough

Reviewed on 3rd June 2024

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Lidia Crisafulli

Previously reviewed at Southwark Playhouse venues:

THE BLEEDING TREE

THE BLEEDING TREE

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