With a Little Bit of Luck at the Roundhouse

In association with Latitude Festival and Paines Plough Theatre Company, With a Little Bit of Luck arrives at London’s Roundhouse this week in a body-bopping finale to its largely successful tour around the UK.

Throwback to London 2001 when the hopes of a generation are high and the garage music movement plays a soundtrack to the lives of young people all over the country. Nadia is 19 years old, recently graduated from college and ready to take on the world. She has the whole summer ahead of her before she is due to start university and in a bid to raise money for her studies starts working for a club night promoter with questionable morals. Agreeing to sell drugs at raves in the city, Nadia makes decisions that will change her life and shape her foreseeable future – either for the better or the worse.

The concept of the piece is refreshingly simple with one single actress playing out the story of Nadia and taking on the guise of various other characters she meets along the way. She is accompanied onstage by a musician and a singer who provide a continuously pumping score of garage tunes, transforming the space into a grimey pulsating nightclub back in the early 2000s. Seroca Davis in the role of Nadia exudes a contagious energy and switches seamlessly between characters in a perfectly executed monologue. Despite the musician, Gabriel Benn, looking at times slightly awkward and the singer Martyna Baker, though blessed with a beautifully soulful voice, struggling to command the full vocal range of the song list, nothing takes away from the nostalgic power of the soundtrack. This much is proven by the reaction of the audience as they rave and cheer, responding strongly to the onstage buzz created by the three performers.

Dark, energising, honest, and raw, With a Little Bit of Luck is a show that will transport a spectator far, in both space and time, from the confines of the four walls in which it is performed. Get ready to instinctively dance, sing and rave your way through this hour-long burst of densely euphoric theatre, particularly if you choose a night when the Roundhouse removes its seating for a standing-only dance pit performance.

Michelle Keepence

With a Little Bit of Luck is on at the Roundhouse from 14^th until 18^th June 2016, for further information or to book visit here.