Last Updated on April 30, 2025
Surreal two-hander play unfolds into an enigma
3.5 out of 5.0 starsA parkkeeper patrols a closed park on a winter’s night when he stumbles across a mysterious woman in a white ballet dress. She refuses to leave, insisting she must make enough paper swans to cover the frozen lake before morning. A dreamlike sequence between the pair repeats in a loop, each time slightly different, with symbolism ripe for the audience to form their own understanding of events.
Starring and written by Vyte Garriga, Paper Swans was performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 2024. It is the first full-length play by the London-based Lithuanian writer, actress and physical theatre performer. Her tutu-clad character, Anna, casts a ghostly figure with a charismatic presence evoking Sadie Frost’s hissing vampire in Ford Coppola’s Dracula. Garriga’s experiences are informed by her post-Soviet upbringing and the absurdity of oppression hierarchy. She has toured various Shakespeare productions with Flabbergast, and her play “2nd Portrait of Dorian G” was Offie-nominated in 2023.
Influenced by Theatre of the Absurd, Paper Swans presents an existential void where we consider the futility of endlessly folding origami that may be destroyed no sooner than it is made. Anna’s obsession and the ritualistic making of swans – even as the effort makes her bleed – mirrors Albert Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus. It’s a seemingly fruitless task akin to pushing a rock up a hill only for it to immediately roll down again. We wait to find out whether it makes her happy or if she’d rather foist the burden onto someone else.
This neat production, from Flabbergast Theatre, much like the idea of paper swans on a lake, is a non-stodgy piece of art for art’s sake. An hour-long West End aperitif to a longer evening with drinks or dinner. It’s an accessible format allowing people to enjoy theatre after work without a late night or high ticket cost.
Whilst there are references to Russia, Swan Lake and The Red Shoes, this is an intriguing absurdist piece of fairly light-hearted (despite the existential angst) cabaret theatre. The performers are both engaging and delightful to watch, as the cycle ends and begins afresh across the short sixty-minute run time, the plot, such as it is, side steps enough with each reprise to maintain curiosity without becoming frustrating.
The gently officious parkkeeper, Peter, played by Daniel Chrisostomou, is loveably annoying and comical. Chrisostomou has a background in martial arts, which, paired with Garriga’s gracefulness, makes for humorous and endearing movements between the two of them, rather than formal ballet. Theatre artist Simon Gleave uses movement and mime influenced by Jacques Lecoq, a renowned French acting coach known for his choreography blending gymnastics, sporting gestures and clowning. The duo’s ongoing confrontation is rhythmic and playful. Even when Paper Swans becomes more visceral and bloody, it’s openly surreal and self-knowing rather than scary.
The top floor space at Soho Theatre holds around eighty. The dark set is mostly limited to a few slim silver birch tree trunks catching the light and a wooden park bench. Although seated only in the third row, we couldn’t see some floor-level staging details. It was only afterwards that we saw the white “lake” covered in paper swans, although these had been much discussed throughout. The original score by English folk musician Nick Hart draws on traditional Lithuanian music.
We enjoyed the lighting effects, which flip the monochrome set into a more menacing red and black darkroom atmosphere. The doom-loop plot doesn’t go far but gradually ramps up to a precipice, and you’re never sure whether it will descend into murder, romance or betrayal. The chemistry between Anna and Peter remains intriguing throughout, there are moments of heightened drama and uncanny discomfort. A lot happens in an hour, and yet, nothing at all.
Towards the end, when Anna says of her task, “I want this to stop, I’m tired,” I empathise. I’d been amused by the hypnotic jolting of the repeating cycle, but an hour was the perfect length before it got silly. In the final throes, one of them pleads, “I hope I get to the point of this whole thing this time, I don’t care, and my patience is running out!” Such is the irony of absurd theatre that we are none the wiser.
If you drink or dine in the excellent Soho Theatre bar afterwards, much like an art-house movie, Paper Swans will yield much symbolism to unpack and interpret. It is a curious pocket-sized puzzle of a show packed with mime and mystery—further productions from Flabbergast will be worth investigating.
29 April – 3 May
Paper Swans
Soho Theatre
Dean Street
Soho
London W1D 3NE
Check here for more Off-West-End theatre recommendations from London Unattached
Leave a Reply