Camden Fringe 2026
The Swan, The Werewolf and Gianpiero
Drama Queen Studios
Genre: Comedy, Contemporary, Costume, Dance and Movement Theatre, Dark Comedy, Drama, Fringe Theatre, Short Plays, Theatre
Venue: Etcetera Theatre, Camden
Festival: Camden Fringe, FringeReview UK
Low Down
Agnes Nielsen’s dark tango comedy The Swan, The Werewolf and Gianpiero returns to Etcetera Theatre till August 24 as part of the Camden Fringe. Premiered with some of the returning cast here in 2024, it’s directed by Nielsen with consulting director Krystian Godlewski. However it returns to the Playground Theatre (off Latimer Road) on November 12 and 15. The booking link is to their Voila! Festival.
Above all a show for creative people to see, to discuss, and argue with.
Review
Mateo and Roxana are having a hard time with a hard tango. She wants to leave. Mateo can’t believe it: they’re breaking up five minutes before they’re due to go on? Jealousy. What else? As they execute their last dance – for the moment – what is it about dances that define how we act? Unless there’s a choreographer who pulls more strings than a bent judge.
From Drama Queen Studios, and after appearing at the Colab Theatre in July, Agnes Nielsen’s dark tango comedy The Swan, The Werewolf and Gianpiero returns to Etcetera Theatre till August 24 as part of the Camden Fringe. Premiered with some of the returning cast here in 2024, it’s directed by Nielsen with consulting director Krystian Godlewski. However it returns to the Playground Theatre (off Latimer Road) on November 12 and 15. There’s a booking link below to their Voila! Festival.
Nielsen has also stated that this run will be one of the last the Etcetera sees. Directly on its close the Etcetera and the Oxford Arms below are to be demolished for some late capitalist venture: probably a data centre. Something of that sadness seeps into everything here. Nielsen’s also a multiple award-winning filmmaker, for instance at last year’s Raindance. All actors here have worked with her – and each other – before. All are tango enthusiasts. That’s all to the good.
After a solo, a duet soon appears. It quicksteps to a curious comedy full of twos and another solo. Quite what Maria the maid (Maddy Miron, an experienced Argentine tango dancer) is doing we never find out. Five years ago she was promised stardom by Gianpiero (James Wilkinson, rather terrifyingly a Cambridge-educated doctor in the tradition of Jonathan Miller, practising near you somewhere in London). Now she dusts his mansion. And now this Diaghilev touched with cut-price Cocteau plays each of the other two characters against each other.
So flirting with both, Gianpiero tells Mateo (Esteban Mereles, an Italo-Argentine tango dancer who’s written/directed/appeared in films) he’s descended from Caesar and his circlet (worn here) if recovered when stolen, will bring infinite power to its rescuer. To Roxana (Nielsen herself) he makes a gift of it. What is he doing? Oh – a Chekhovian pistol appears quite early on. Maria dusts it every day.
Not to mention everyone fourth-walling the audience for Mateo’s flirt with “Katie”. Who seems to enjoy it: though Roxana certainly doesn’t. Not to mention Roxana’s (sadly offstage) Juan who seems to measure better off the floor than on.
Maria though stays in Gianpiero’s house and dusts ironically. Miron’s presence bar being an ASM with a cameo is baffling, beyond the camaraderie of this small company. Maria’s implicit warning to Roxana should be developed. Or some backstory with Gianpiero himself. Or indeed a lot more Argentine tango for one. Otherwise it’s a three-hander.
Thick accents and gloriously over-the-top silliness makes husky work of the tango-arc of the tango couple. Gianpiero wants them to appear in his The Swan, The Werewolf and Gianpiero. They appear in character and don’t recognise reach other.
Naturally strings are pulled together as the maestro imagines – hoping to pull off something shocking in front of a live audience. There’s some fun lines, a neat payoff and a couple of theatrical coups I won’t spoil.
Despite this being a couple of years old, The Swan is still a work in progress, mixing a vaudevillian sketch-show with pseudo-guignol that never really threatens to engage us at any level other than the comedy it announces. It could work in film: Nielsen’s explicitly visual imagination clearly revels in such smouldering media. Godlewski’s immersed in physical theatre, and clearly brings explicitly theatrical skills to Nielsen’s more film-oriented imagination. It still feels though not quite theatrically realised.
What lifts it above this are dance-moves and diabolic flounces. Though a little ragged – we’re almost too used to Strictly – they showcase a small company of flair and much deeper talents. Indeed if Drama Queen Studios keeps and develops this company with others, they’d prove a dynamic hub.
Gianpiero in Wilkinson’s hands makes a suitably narcissistic auteur, self-delighting, glintingly realised as he smarms the audience too. Mereles ensures luckless Mateo keeps his straight-act jealousy even through his dance-moves; and Nielsen’s Roxana hers too (to 1973’s “Roxanne”). Nielsen has more to do since her Swan is a different animal as it were to her tango, and she’s almost impossibly veiled: the costumes are well-sourced. The absurdity assails their dignity.
There’s witty use of sound including mobile phones (suggesting we’re not after all in the 1920s), as well as music which naturally reaches its apogee in Tchaikovsky’s ‘Swan’. Lighting is straightforwardly effective.
This is though a promising work which doesn’t yet quite know which animal it is. Farce like tango needs a sharper edge – here the slightly shabby feel of a theatre’s last week seems to sap some tiny moments in the blocking; which will change at the Playground in November. Make no mistake though. These actors are naturally high-energy and so are their story-arcs.
Nevertheless The Swan, The Werewolf and Gianpiero cusps a send-up of artists and the vicious manipulation of writer/directors. Which means half the cast guy themselves in laughter-distorting mirrors. It also cradles a refreshingly non-British imaginary. It needs in its 66 minutes to find its own range and fathom, to decide what to do with Maria. And deliver some knock-out moves beyond the satisfaction of the magnificently purring auteur. This is above all a show for creative people to see, to discuss, and argue with.
Producer, Drama Queen Studios, Photographer Dress Rehearsal: Marcos Mereles, Photographer Premiere: Sasha Karakadzai
