Katharine James
posted 9 March 2007

Mr Sole Abode (Leo Kay) is a strange little man who tells fantastical stories. The stories combine to provide a compelling patchwork narrative; threaded with explorations into the wider themes of human relationships with the built environment and the nature of social responsibility. Mr Sole Abode doesn't yet feel like a finished production, but as it stands this one-man show is touching, humane and has tremendous potential to provoke thought on an individual and political scale.

Sole lives in a fridge - doubtless cast away by one of modernity's relentless consumers. The fridge, exquisitely designed by Faulty Optic, could be a new home for Stig of the Dump or Great Uncle Bulgaria. It's the perfect den of childhood fantasy - safe, contained, womb-like. It is also an expression of Sole's dispossession and peripheral isolation.

Puns intended, Kay's creation is a lonely soul. His stories are the basis of his identity and their retelling, its consolidation. Some of his stories are lies: Sole would have us believe that he is some kind of Master Builder, claiming the Gherkin and the Eiffel Tower amongst others, as his own work. Some are fantasies: cue mouth- watering descriptions of the sort of food that Sole thinks is 'where it's at'. Some are clearly painful, suppressed memories: notably of a rootless, friendless childhood.

Sole returns to food and great architecture several times in the piece. So vivid and sensual are these explorations that we begin to see with Sole's eyes and taste with his tongue. He might not be an architect but he has a deep affinity with space and the passion of his words conjure buildings that pulse with life as the genius of their construction is revealed. Art stems from and must communicate with, life. The wonder of a great building lies in its relationship with the people moving within. If there is harmony, the building lives, providing a refuge for the soul.

Sole is a wonderful character and Kay is a gifted performer. A clownish, childlike figure, funny and, at times extremely sad, Sole commands immediate sympathy. Having rejected the trappings of a material world, Sole is still trapped within his own physicality. His slight hunchback, a visible reinforcement of the inner conflicts of his mind, echoes a benign Richard III. Dispossessed this time, though, not dispossessor.

The writing is truly splendid. A collaboration between Kay and Benji Reid, who also directs, it is an amalgamation of a sort of rap-cum-performance-poetry smattered with gentle lyricism. This is in keeping with Sole's soft clownisness and slight deformity. Sole really exercises his words. His meditation on the perfect chicken dinner - which is, 'like, roasted for twenty minutes, yeah, and then basted, basted, all over' - is a fine example of his linguistic play. A bit like a DJ, a bit like a stand-up, Sole repeats, cuts, slows down and ups the tempo. This goes on for a good few minutes with Kay miming the process all the while. A game is made and the result communicates a genuine sense of the effort of preparation and the joy of creation. What is great about this part is that it is given time to develop.

The reason the show does not feel finished is that so much is going on that not everything has space to take proper shape. Although Sole's tenuous grip on reality on the one hand allows much freedom, on the other, it loosens the focus. To move from one story to the next, Sole often free-associates ideas. While the shift from his littering the floor to his food fantasies is pretty seamless; the demise of Harry the Iguana offers a moderately queasy segway into the section on New Orleans. This, along with the meditation on temporary housing in South America, is also slightly out of kilter with the rest of the show. They introduce a current political dimension, which, while not bullishly didactic, feels a little shoehorned: as if it has not quite come from quite the same place in its creators' hearts or minds as the rest of the piece. There is something explicitly insistent in the repeated line: 'it was not my responsibility…besides, I had my own cities to build,' which lacks subtlety. The restless, semi-danced dream sequence works well until Sole overturns a table onto his back, the underside sporting a Manhattan-like skyline in miniature. The motion is clumsy and the notion a little indulgent.

In his programme notes, Leo Kay tells us that he hopes to explore 'the power of individual perception and the implications this has on our ability to transform, and our responsibility to ourselves and to society.' This could make for an extremely self-important piece of work, which this show isn't. When all's said and done, Mr Sole Abode is well worth seeing. At the moment, the sum of its parts is a little too great for the whole. But it is still an intelligent, humble and fascinating examination of one man's struggle to make sense of it all. His ultimate success or failure is, in a large part, immaterial. The point is, Mr Sole Abode thinks about his relation to the world. Perhaps we should too.

Till 17 March 2007