Edinburgh Fringe 2025
Dreamscape
Andy Jordan Productions and Hindsight Productions
Genre: Drama, Fringe Theatre, Hip Hop, Theatre
Venue: Bramley at Gilded Balloon at Appleton Tower
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
A re-imagination of the life and final moments of 19 year old African American woman Tyisha Miller, shot to death by the police in Riverside California, using poetry, beatboxing, dance and theatre.
Review
Dreamscape is a superbly well performed and original hour in the theatre. Just two performers bring us the story of what made Tyisha Miller who she was, and how she died at age 19, when she was shot to death by police in Riverside California, a town east of Los Angeles. Natali Micciche vividly portrays Tyisha as full of life, dreams and passions. We see a richly crafted character who is a witty, confident and creative young woman with so much potential, and we instantly love her. She has many youthful pleasures, many strong opinions of dos and don’ts in a woman’s crafting of her appearance and the negotiation of men’s behaviour. There are some very funny and hugely endearing moments in these vignettes of Tyisha’s teenage life. It’s a beautiful portrayal combining dance and mostly verse-based monologues, but also with moments of rap too. It’s a captivating mix. Sitting back to back on two chairs as the play opens, behind Micciche is John ‘Faahz’ Merchant, who beatboxes with truly impressive virtuosity on and off throughout the hour. The range of his vocal skills is amongst the best examples of beatboxing I have seen and comes from years of honing his craft. He also portrays a police officer, giving us his testimony about how he attended the scene, claiming he found Tyisha unconscious and twitching in her locked car with the music blaring, with a loaded gun in her lap. He breaks the window and, claiming he heard loud bangs, believed he was being shot at, and so fired shots at Tyisha.
The dramatic structure of the piece is chilling and clever. Once the world of the drama has been set up, and intercut with snapshots of Tyisha’s passions in life, each new round of beatboxing concludes with Merchant dispassionately describing the pathology/ballistics report of the 12 bullets that killed Tyisha. These are graphic, clinical and distressing descriptions of what the bullets did to her body which really capture the brutality of her killing. Simple and devastating. Excellent moments of theatre that will stay with audiences.
But the story stops with her killing and the end of the play feels abrupt and leaves us hanging. We never find out if the police officers were prosecuted and convicted (we suspect not, but we are not told), we don’t know if the police officer’s claim that he thought he was being shot at are true (again we suspect not, but are not told).
Writer and director Rickerby Hinds says in the programme notes that he views “hip hop theatre as one of the most potent artistic expressions of our time.” I agree and this production captures this potency impressively. For me, it just needed more of the story. Nonetheless, an impressive hour of theatre well worth seeing.
