It’s not often that you have to jump over a puddle to get to your seat at the theatre.
The floor is slick with water and small buckets are dotted around the stage. I look up, worried that the Vaults may have sprung a leak.
Despite the inclement weather, Casey Jay Andrews’ smile is bright as she dashes around the circle of benches, saying hello to everyone. She picks up one of the buckets and shows it to a couple sitting close to me. "There's a bit in the show when I saw HQS Wellington," she says, showing the small label stuck to the bucket which also says 'HQS Wellington.’
"Please chuck it at me - not at this lady who's writing," she adds hurriedly, indicating me. I have my notebook and pen ready on my lap and I quickly join in with a plea not to splash the water in my direction. My handwriting is bad enough as it is without having to worry about the biro running.
If my fellow audience members are feeling any anxiety about lobbing a bucket of water at a young woman they are hiding it well. Even Casey's dark comment about the door closing and sealing us in is met by only the mildest giggles.
With an even brighter smile, Casey welcomes us. Anyone lucky enough to have visited Casey's shed in last year’s The Archive of Educated Hearts will be familiar with her calming introductions, and after a brief warning that any fans of Moby Dick in the audience may need to brace themselves, we are launched straight into Casey's (very) loose adaptation on the tale. We are taken, not to the sea, but to a car park in Hounslow, where Dylan, is drowning in guilt after hitting a stray cat called Ahab with her great white... car.
Casey’s poetic phrasing winds its way through our struggling heroine’s day, as she decides to trek all the way to the Sea Life centre on the Southbank. On foot.
She talks about desire paths, echoing her own journey through a collage of whale anatomy facts (did you know that the aorta of a whale can be as large as pipes at the London Bridge waterworks?), child development, evolutionary psychology, the wingspan of a pelican, the maximum number of times you can fold a piece of paper (103, apparently. Although your wodge of paper will be larger than the observable universe by that point). Casey, it seems, is a collector of facts. Plucking them from the world and displaying them for us to admire. Joyfully quoting the Kew Gardens website at us just because she likes their wording.
Not that Casey is short of good words. Dylan’s epic walk across London is peppered with the type of linguistic tricks that make my heart sing. Sentences diving backwards and forwards, twisting between causation and logic (“She can’t work out if she forgot how to be joyous because the things in her life fell apart, or if the things in her life fell apart because she forgot how to be joyous”), using alliteration and repetition with wild glee, and all told with an excited breathlessness. Words tumble over each other, dissolving away before I’ve had the chance to fully soak myself in them.
An audience member is drafted in to animate Ahab the cat, in the form of a ginger hand-puppet.
“You’ve done an excellent job, Drew,” Casey tells our puppeteer. “Very sinister.”
We all applaud, knowing that there is a good deal more demanding audience interaction to come as Dylan passes a moored ship.
That’s the cue!
The first bucket is thrown tentatively, aimed at Casey’s feet.
But it doesn’t take long for my fellow audience members to get into their stride as checks off this city’s collection of maritime vehicles and soon Casey is soaked.
Droplets spring from her fingertips as she points the way - Onwards, ho!
This manic energy cannot last forever. Ahab is fast approaching and Dylan has to stop.
As Casey kneels on the ground, the spotlight behind her casts a golden halo around her. An aura of steam rises off her wet hair, as some mystical spirit takes hold to transform this sodden performer into a religious icon.
It’s an arresting image. One which will stay with my a long time.
As will Casey’s parting thoughts - we must not scold our hands just to feel warmth under our skin.
Kindness is the message.
And if we can all be as thoughtful as Casey, perhaps there is some hope left for the world in these troubled times.
Or at least, some hope for the conservation of my notebook.
The Wild Unfeeling World was at VAULT Festival, 28 January - 1 Febuary 2020