FringeReview UK 2026
Last and First Men
Arts Council England, The Coronet Theatre
Genre: Adaptation, Ballet, Contemporary, Costume, Dance, Dance and Movement Theatre, European Theatre, Film, International, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Sci-fi, Short Plays, Theatre
Venue: The Coronet Theatre, Notting Hill
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
Neon Dance presents Olaf Stapledon’s 1930 Last and First Men (his first novel; there were though two sequels, so not quite the last). With three dancers in a piece led by choreographer Adrienne Hart, it plays at the magically-programmed Coronet Theatre Notting Hill till February 28.
A brave and bewitching venture, typically unique to this space.
Review
Back in 2020 an acclaimed film by a man two years dead about a 1930 novel by a man who died in 1950, dealing with events two billion years in the future, was released. And now Neon Dance presents Olaf Stapledon’s 1930 Last and First Men (his first novel; there were though two sequels, so not quite the last). With three dancers in a piece led by choreographer Adrienne Hart, it plays at the magically-programmed Coronet Theatre Notting Hill till February 28.
This is a collaboration both live and posthumous. Hart collaborates with the three dancers Fukiko Takase, Aoi Nakamura, and Kelvin Kilonzo; and Makiko Aoyama. Famed for scoring many films and concert pieces, the late Johann Jóhannsson‘s 16mm black and white film is also a first and last. With specially recorded narration from Tilda Swinton it plays with stills projections to a mesmerising orchestral score composed by Jóhannsson himself and Yair Elazar Gotman. Icelandic composers often invoke the elemental: from Jon Liefs to Anna Thorvaldsdottir themes round volcanic activity from geysers to glacial movement abound: a tradition of textural, nature-inspired soundscapes often (paradoxically) of great elemental power. Jóhannsson (1969-2018), eight years Thorvaldsdottir’s senior sounds like her, though this score is softer, gradated with electronic sonics. There’s a more numinous background as befits a film-score. It’s quiet throughout. Nevertheless it’s pervasive, involving subtly indefinable sound effects.
The most striking costume artefact from award-winning Ana Rajčević involves a gauze-like multi-threaded tube stretched between two heads (Takase, Nakamura), emblematic of the last species’ ability to communicate as a hive mind: think The Chrysalids 25 years before John Wyndham got round to it, inspired like so many by Stapledon. Elsewhere the costumes by Mikio Sakabe and Rajcevic detract as minimally as possible from the dancers. What breaks this are the tube and minimal artefacts like masks.
This is then storytelling, both semaphored and semiotic. Dancers are tethered, obliquely responding to Swinton’s narration; there are pauses to let dances sink in. It’s hypnotic; you’re invited to enter its Icelandic-inflected world, one surely ideally-suited to empathise with Stapledon’s long-breathed vision. 18 species of constantly evolving and degenerating humanoid avatars are (rightly) telescoped: we hear details of the last. Some species are designed by their predecessors.
With the latter six migrated to Neptune, the last habitable planet as the sun expands, marooned survivors reach back in time to us, the first. The ‘Last Men’s urgency to reach back in time and speak (as degenerating conditions render this difficult) seems more a philosophical valediction to prepare us, curiously open-ended.
Dancing itself is slow. This 77-minute piece is billed as 65, and started six minutes later due to latecomers. There’s a shift 20 minutes in. We’ve been entranced by adagios of three dancers, two linked as mentioned by the device, the third using white props to express a different, peripatetic mobility. Though storytelling is telegraphed, it’s not always engaging: there’s too much anchoring. We’re now confronted with entwined bodies. After 36 minutes the “however” urgency of the ‘Last Men’ is relayed. Swinton narrates the adaptive appearance of different species, variously shaded (even green), hirsute, or “elephantine”. Hart’s intricate use of bodies twining and uncurled marks evolution and catastrophe with a visceral edge. It’s not repetitive; though the default adagio pulses through the whole. The end, from 47 minutes in, is moving. Surviving astronauts, sent to explore new worlds to inhabit return with half of them dead, the rest traumatised, unable to relate. Kilonzo staggers with a white helmet resembling a bee-keeper’s mask.
Black-and-white photographs of various monolithic images from different cultures are shot to look alien. A palindromic return journey means a few repeats, including a vertiginous shot up the Acropolis. Elsewhere images from extinct civilisations cross-fertilise with faded modernist curves, rendered strange. Nico De Rooij’s lighting treats the stage with gulphs of shadows.
This is admittedly a piece shackled by more than theme. The need for detailed storytelling, even stripped-down, yokes movement to voiceover; image to both. Magnificent as Swinton’s narration is, its unhurried beat means tempi are restrained, choreographic language tethers round on a leash.
Swinton conveys the warm impersonality of beings from a vast time/space distance. An urgently-inflected narrative would disrupt this. Though current flatness strains too. A reduced text might help free choreography to the loss of storytelling. Or a text of similarly-reduced surtitles – if partly distracting.
Nevertheless this is mesmerising. It never seems too long. Indeed the end when it comes is sudden. A brave and bewitching venture, typically unique to this space.
Photo Credit: Parcifal Werkman
Supported by: CTM Festival Berlin, Sadler’s Wells, Swindon Dance, Pavilion Dance South West.
