Story No #1

Waiting for a show to start is usually a drag. You’ve made it out on a Sunday night in your best dress, nursing a drink, awkwardly avoiding eye contact with the strangers beside you. The mood dips; the agitation kicks in. You start wondering if you really needed to leave the house for this. That familiar tension hung in the air at the start of Story #1 - the latest experimental theatre piece from Rachel Mars and Greg Wohead. Except this time, I wasn’t just staring at the stage, shifting uncomfortably in my seat. Instead, I was watching Come Dine With Me.

Not just any episode, either. It was a golden-era instalment set in Dorset, featuring a gloriously chaotic ensemble of contestants: Gary, Pauline, Phillip, and Natalie. Names that, as it turned out, would prove important.

Meta-theatre has never really been my thing. Like a lot of people, I like a story with a clear arc - characters to root for, a theme to latch onto, some kind of narrative momentum. In a way, Story #1 gives you that. But really, it’s a test of endurance. A playful, unhinged challenge to the audience’s attention span, filled with rambling asides, wildly inappropriate tangents, and moments that make you painfully aware of the stranger sitting next to you.

And that’s the point. Every choice - every outlandish, oddly hilarious detail - is deliberate. The characters they read about from their scripted narratives are all, as I slowly began to realise, those exact same characters from the episode we all watched when we thought we were just being given some loose entertainment while we were waiting.

Natalie is the first name to resurface. No longer just the dinner party guest we laughed at, she’s now tearing through open fields on her dirtbike, chasing freedom as she revels in the hum of the engine between her legs. And just as she and the bike were becoming one body, she flies off it headfirst and dies.

The character analyses were undoubtedly key to appreciating the show, even when the real people they were based on became a mirage - half-remembered, blurred by the strange alchemy of performance. But Story #1 doesn’t just explore these characters. It devours them. It chews them up, spits them back out, and forces you to reckon with what they made you feel: raw, unfiltered, brutally judgmental, and self-reflective. I am sure I wasn’t the only one in the audience questioning how I would fare at a dinner party with the likes of a zesty, fun-loving Gary-type.

Much of Story #1 unfolds within the boundaries of our imagination. It demands that we actively participate, filling in the gaps left by its abstract, fragmented form. And it’s not just what’s said or shown on stage that makes an impact - we’re invited, even urged, to project our own interpretations, to inhabit the awkward, surreal spaces between the moments.

There’s something about the strange, unexpected moments that stick with you. Like Gary’s bizarre escapades. Gary, the happy-chappy of the bunch, who’s been trolling through OK Cupid for months, hooked on PornHub, and now dreaming up a threesome with his gay partner and Pauline, the woman on the show he’s definitely set on wooing. His relentless pursuit of sex becomes almost absurd in its intensity. But it’s not just talk, we’re shown explicit, graphic moments that thrust us into Gary’s mind, as if to strip away any pretense and make us face his desires head-on.

By the time Story #1 is over, you’re not just questioning the characters but also your own assumptions and reactions, leaving you to wonder: was that performance for me, or was I part of it all along?

An assault on the senses, a delicious blend of discomfort and discovery. It’s a night you won’t forget, even if you’re not sure what, exactly, you’re supposed to remember of it. Truly a surreal experience.