UPSTAGED RATING: 

“A journey of one woman and her stuff through a lifetime of self-storage”

Handle With Care is a curiously intimate site-specific performance which plays out in the metal units and brightly lit corridors of a self-storage facility. Presented as part of the innovative Week 53 festival hosted by The Lowry in Salford, Handle With Care tells the story of Zoe through the most poignant stages of her life. Exploring the central themes to the festival, Place & Identity, we are encouraged to explore ideas surrounding life experiences, the memories we hold on to and the personal possessions that we use to keep them alive.

The show is visually impressive – it’s a promenade performance with the audience following the actors around the Ready Steady Store unit in Worsley, Greater Manchester. The small audience find themselves watching the story unfold within the locker-lined corridors and small confines of each storage unit. It’s innovative and intimate and the audience are encouraged to move around the actors during the performance – it’s a bit like a fly-on-the-wall experience. The audience witness the reality of the arguments that take place behind closed doors, the domestic bickering and private moments of reflection.

What is so remarkable is the fluidity with which Handle With Care is presented – in 90 minutes we whizz through the decades in Zoe’s life, from 1988 to the present day. The dynamic cast handle the transition between varying performance spaces and they work around the strategically placed audience well . 

Fuelled by the audiences curiosity, each key is turned in each storage unit and the door flung open, to reveal another poignant incident in Zoe’s life. The detailed design is studded with costume and artefacts from the 80’s and 90’s and the soundtrack featuring The Stone Roses and Alanis Morisette pushes us through each year and into the next. 

Handle With Care is a triumphant site-specific piece and it could not be performed in a more suited environment – encouraging us to reflect on our own experiences, memories and our notions of place and identity.

 -Kristy Stott

Handle With Care continues to tour through May and June 2016: Harlow Playhouse with Lok ‘n Store from the 13th-15th May, South St Arts Centre with Lok ‘n Store from the 19th-22nd May, Lighthouse Poole with Lok ‘n Store from the 26th-29th May and Shoreditch Townhall with Urban Locker from the 3rd-25th June. For more information on the site-specific performance please click here.