Katrina

Synopsis

August 2005 saw one of the worst natural disasters hit the United States as Hurricane Katrina destroyed the city of New Orleans, causing a humanitarian crisis. Katrina tells the stories of the survivors in the immediate aftermath through music and verbatim testimony. In August 2005 Hurricane Katrina narrowly missed New Orleans. The resulting storms breached rotting levees and emptied neighbouring Lake Pontchartrain into the city. Marooned by floodwater that swamped over 80% of their homes, the inhabitants had to wait a week without food or clean water before their own government came to their aid. Katrina uses survivor testimonies and the rich musical tradition of New Orleans to tell the story of the immediate aftermath of the hurricane. Staged in a five-storey warehouse on London’s south bank, Jericho House’s new play takes the audience on an odyssey through a drowned city, enveloped in the most immersive of visual and aural designs, in the company of individuals displaced and abandoned within their own city.

Our Review:

Theo Bosanquet - 7 September 2009

Katrina, the latest site-specific show from Jonathan Holmes and his cross-media company Jericho House, is an emotionally stirring if at times dramatically ill-judged production.

Billed “a play of New Orleans”, it focuses on the before, during and after of the devastating 2005 hurricane, which flooded 80 percent of the city and led to the deaths of nearly 2000 residents, displacing countless more (many of whom are still living in temporary accommodation). It's something of a hybrid between a promenade performance and a straight play, and it's the latter element which lets it down.

Set across four floors of the Bargehouse on Oxo Tower Wharf, the arrangement of the tiers is neatly done. The first is a tourist centre, advertising the familiar attractions of New Orleans pre-Katrina. We then ascend to a bar – the 'Funky Butt' – where various cast members make small talk as televisions relay storm warnings; Miranda (Wunmi Mosaku) takes to the s...

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Latest User Review

Job - 19 September 2009:

I'm with the review on this one. An effective opening and finale, but a turgidly untheatrical hour-&-twenty-minutes in the middle where arelentless parade of verbatim testimony is thrown at us. The actors deliver it as thought they're declaiming homilies at a Remembrance service - except for the excellent Andrew Dennis, who seems keenly aware that the material is flat and who goes on a creditable one-man crusade to energise the evening. Nice funeral though. I can just about squeeze two stars out of my goodwill locker, but alas no more....

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