Brighton Year-Round 2026
Fasted
Marcus Pollett
Genre: Dance and Movement Theatre, Drama, Fringe Theatre, New Writing, Theatre
Venue: St Mary’s Hall, Kemptown Brighton
Festival: Brighton Year-Round
Low Down
Marcus Pollett’s Fasted plays at St Mary’s Hall, Brighton directed by Pollett till October 3.
Pollett has proved he’s a dramatic force to be reckoned with.
Review
How on earth do you find two consummate ballet dancers amidst a nine-strong ensemble in a church hall on an October Saturday afternoon? Playing three lost British people in a Soviet beartrap of 1973 that makes Solaris look logical? And Bulgakov a chess-master of realism. Content warning: There’s a full pas de deux, swinging inches from you. It’s frankly reviewer-blowing. Marcus Pollett’s Fasted plays at St Mary’s Hall, Brighton directed by Pollett till October 3.
Fasted is a development of a Brighton Fringe piece last May, and will develop further. Pollett’s debut play Mummified premiered in May 2025, and in its latest iteration last November. That was autobiographical, centring around abuse in a public school. This could hardly be more different. Vastly ambitious, over-populated even for a now 90-minute fringe piece (no longer a fringe work then) its historical and thematic obsessions prove resoundingly that Pollett can write about what he personally doesn’t know.
That has distinct advantages, and naturally a downside. That said, there’s little here that’s implausible, and Fasted seems well-researched. The snap and snarl of Pollett’s dialogue bespeaks training as an actor (always a good sign in a dramatic writer). It’s offset by his singular, immersive dramaturgy. Fasted, like Mummified but even more so, proves picaresque. You never know where it might go next and it doesn’t always seem impelled. It can sometimes seem in its loping range and huge scope, one damn thing after another. And I have quibbles with the end. No spoilers here though.
Casper de La Mare’s Waifa flurries on. He’s a shambling old intellectual, with a story from over 50 years ago. We might guess at his identity but he seems stuck somewhere between Moscow and Brighton, in a no-place of exposition. His performance is authentic though, and like all the actors, de La Mare’s secure in his affect and characterisation.
Burnley Ballet isn’t the first place you’d expect to go next but this is where Ballerina Nina Glover (Evie McGuire) and Conrad Salt (Lewis Golding) practice their pas de deux. Conrad’s in love with Nina. Nina doesn’t know it, and is somewhat heedless of what everyone else guesses. The church hall stage might be plain, but its upstage raised dais allows two mighty props: a piano; and in front of that a two-seat sofa got up like a train carriage row of seating for three. Behind the piano to Pollett’s sound (he also manages lighting very effectively) a few chords are struck and the school’s resident pianist, Olga (a warmly realised performance by Ines Serrano) emerges as Nina’s bestie. Just as Conrad tries declaring himself awkwardly.
Anna, the Ballet’s director (Jakki Bendell) enjoys an incredibly brief tirade berating Nina’s hips: enough to send her into terminal dysmorphia. Nina decides on a fasting resort, inexplicably located within the Soviet Union. Loving Olga goes with her (I wish this bonding might have been explored, but their relationship is expanded touchingly here from the first iteration). They can avoid Conrad, they think. But Conrad comes too. En route they encounter Soviet cosmonaut Alexy (an avuncular bear of a part inhabited by Rhys Bloy) who sticks to them like proverbial Soviet glue.
Alexy swiftly disposes of the importunate Conrad, who then takes a different trajectory inside the Soviet Union. Spencer Nightingill’s Guard makes one of three appearances here. At Psikhushka Baikal – a fictional institute based on the real Lake Baikal – Conrad is institutionalised for his obsessive pursuit. They’re not wrong. Working with Bogdan who identifies as a psychiatric nurse (a consummate weariness as realised by Geoffrey Thompson in a humane, glowing performance) Conrad gradually sees his errors. Bogdan’s more persuasive than the Director (Nightingill again); or he might be incarcerated for life. The trouble is, as the Director proves, there’s a price for release. It mirrors Nina’s (though for some reason Olga is spared). Golding’s is a convincingly gaunt performance of obsession and remorse, touching and again relatable. He’s no mean dancer either, with him and McGuire – who’s also choreographer – proving they have all the lifts taken out of the ninth week of Strictly.
As for Olga and Nina, given revealingly Russian names (something not explored) their arrival at the Goryachinsk Resort is attended by the ever-shadowing Cosmonaut, and by a staff including Ivanov the controlling “fasting guru”: Nikko Grosz (who also wrote the fine music) is the charismatic but dictatorial director and Jakki Bendell again Ivanov’s Cook. The audience are now treated to an air lunch, somewhere out of Timon of Athens (the menu’s printed on the back of the programmes, a nice touch).
Characterisation of Nina and Conrad is both subtle and compelling. You feel Pollett clearly identifies with Nina’s dysmorphia, feeling of entrapment both before and after she travels to the Soviet Union; a low self-esteem and sheer relief at Olga’s friendship. Conrad in his relationship with the mercurial yet wise Bogdan emerges as a rounded, redemptive if damaged. Young man. Other characterisations are apt and telling – even say the brief role of Anna, say.
There’s some intermittent direct address from Waifa beyond the air lunch, though overall it’s straight storytelling. There’s none of the contemporary vogue for storytelling in the third person interspersed with direct speech. This is certainly a unique play: I’ve seen nothing like it and would have surmised otherwise it was an adaptation of an intriguing Soviet-retro novel by Francis Spufford. That’s meant as praise, though moments in this episodic whirligig of Soviet time sometimes threaten to engulf us. After 90 minutes it feels as if we’ve witnessed a hybrid between epic theatre and a shaggy bear story.
Clearly Pollett’s dramaturgy is about development – always lengthening the play second time around – and discipline: knowing how to shape. He’s also been a reviewer and knows from the outside as well as performer how these works go. Like Mummified, Fasted is a fascinating, many-faceted, sometimes dizzyingly told drama. It needs further development, but make no mistake: nine actors over two continents connected by the Trans-Siberian express and a climax in a railway station (which, to be strictly fair I wasn’t entirely convinced by) is a remarkable feat. Let alone in a Brighton church on a Saturday afternoon. Fasted asks more questions than epic: the self-imaging foisted upon women, and particularly dancers and athletes. And the outfalls of obsessional projection. All praise to actors and creatives for keeping this work literally airborne. I look forward to Fasted revisited and returning sleeker and sharpened. But above all Pollett has proved he’s a dramatic force to be reckoned with.
Wardrobe Master Casper de La Mare, Photo Credit Kathy De La Mer.
