'Dirty Crusty' review or 'Can you clean up your act?'

Dirty Crusty, Clare Barron
The Yard Theatre, 29th October 2019
Written for The Guardian 

Dirty Crusty is about ballet and bodies and pushing ourselves to the limit. It’s about the stories we tell with our bodies and the secrets we keep hidden inside. It’s got a lot in common with Clare Barron’s later work, Dance Nation, but doesn’t have the same hot energy as that wild and exciting show.

We open on a pristine model house with a huge silver moon glowing overhead. The model stands perched above Emma Bailey’s secretive set, which keeps many of the performance spaces hidden behind heavy curtains. This is Jeanine’s house. It is untainted and unreachable. It’s only later, with a dramatic sweep of the curtains, that we’ll discover the squalor inside.

Jeanine (Akiya Henry, who is amazingly mercurial) is 31 and at a crossroads. Will new boyfriend Viktor (Douggie McMeekin) lift her up? Or how about dancer Synda (Abiona Omonua)? Could ballet help this young woman embrace her body and love herself? Both characters push and stretch Jeanine in beautiful and punishing ways. They empower her and they break her. In one fascinating scene, Jeanine learns a new dance move, which is riddled with contradictions. She flutters her arms delicately, then crosses them resolutely and shouts with increasing conviction: “Don’t touch me!” Strength and fragility dance side by side: sex games empower and then suddenly frighten; drunken nights liberate and later depress; expressions of love explode magically and quickly fade to nothing. Jay Miller’s production is playful and nimble and uses microphones, songs, dance and sex to explore Jeanine’s limits. It sometimes feels a bit deliberate and overworked – too much like a dramatic exercise – but it’s still a great workout for the mind.