Review: This Can’t Be It?, The Pen Theatre

The desire for meaning and consistency is something most of us have felt at one point or another, and these can often feel painfully out of reach in a world where the only real certainty is change. Performer and creative Laurence Dodd leans directly into that discomfort with This Can’t Be It, a work-in-progress piece that embraces flux, curiosity and the refusal to arrive at neat conclusions. Rather than promising answers, Dodd offers something far more compelling: presence, play and a shared exploration of what it means to search at all.

Perpetually derailed, overwhelmed and hungry to become someone, Dodd’s onstage persona arrives with the promise of doing “something very special indeed”, something that might just shake our contemporary condition to its core. What follows is not a tidy revelation but a messy, open-hearted exploration of how we stay receptive to mystery when the world seems intent on closing us down. Blending contemporary clowning with elements of performance art, This Can’t Be It resists definition as much as it resists resolution.

This Can’t Be It immediately disarmed its audience with its raw humanity. Dodd appears onstage unapologetically himself, presenting his neurodivergence not as a framing device but as an intrinsic part of the work’s rhythm and logic. The result is a performance that is explosively endearing and deeply vulnerable in equal measure. We are taken on a journey that seeks meaning anywhere it might exist, whether now, ten years from now, or perhaps retroactively in the past, and remains open to the possibility that meaning may never fully arrive.

Dodd’s physicality is central to the show’s success. He moves fluidly between anxiety, anticipation, stillness and fleeting contentment, embodying emotional states that feel instantly recognisable. His comedic timing is razor-sharp, often catching the audience off guard, and each turn of the performance seems to reveal another trick up his sleeve. Although Dodd makes it clear he does not have everything planned out, the lack of structure becomes a strength rather than a flaw. We are invited into a rare theatrical perspective: what it might look like to create not for an audience, but alongside one.

In a cultural moment obsessed with finished products and perfection, it is both refreshing and quietly radical to witness a performance actively growing over the course of an hour. While there are moments where the pacing could be snappier, these pauses allow space to digest the larger questions posed, particularly those surrounding change, timing and readiness. Through playful music, direct questions and spontaneous interaction, Dodd uses the audience as his ensemble. The level of trust cultivated in the room is remarkable; no one is left behind.

Ultimately, This Can’t Be It asks us to reconsider our fixation on certainty and meaning. In the face of human unpredictability, perhaps the search itself – chaotic, sincere and unfinished – is more than enough.

Written by: Laurence Dodd
Technician: Rachel Dobbie

This show has completed its current run.