Review: Wormhole of Our Formation, Battersea Arts Centre

Catherine Hoffmann’s weird and wonderful interdisciplinary work is often visceral, provocative, absurdist and autobiographical. And so it is with Wormhole of Our Formation, an absurdist live art performance that draws from her experience surviving the Dudley, Eunice and Franklin storms in 2022 while navigating financial precarity and the harsh realities of women’s health, ageing, and caring. Growing older is a b****, but when a polar vortex comes along and makes your life that much harder, screaming is warranted.

Stepping into Wormhole of Our Formation feels like stepping into another dimension. As audiences enter the Council Chamber at Battersea Arts Centre, they hear the rain before they see anything else. Rusted car parts hang like burnt-out shells, strung around the set like bodies caught in a post-apocalyptic fallout. Haze drifts across the dimly lit stage. A desk sits in the centre like a driver’s seat waiting for a pilot. The set is hauntingly beautiful, so captivating that audiences lingered at the end of the show to gaze at the stage. 

Audiences are taken on a nightmare road trip reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, except instead of falling ash, it’s a never-ending rain. Hoffmann navigates endless B&Bs and cramped rooms (along with terrible health issues) as she tries to outrun the storm while on the cusp of a breakdown. There is desperate gratitude for the smallest mercies, like the luxury of an ensuite in a world that is falling apart. Long guttural screams punctuate the air intermittently. It’s all very grim, yet absurdly funny at some points. 

With a set up like a live radio show, Hoffmann narrates the story from cards while simultaneously operating the technical elements, transforming scenes at the push of a button. The world she conjures through the excellent stagecraft is expansive but also deeply personal. Marty Langthorne’s vivid neon lights create a stormy hellscape, the bright reds and magentas working alongside distorted soundscapes of loud sounds and overlapping voices to conjure a feeling of dread and despair. At times, Hoffmann’s voice is lost entirely beneath the soundscape she has built as she drowns and suffocates in her crisis.

The scenes grow progressively wilder, culminating in a full-blown tempest. The wind machine and speakers are cranked up to maximum level beneath the hypnotic beats of Unkle’s ‘Looking for the Rain’, as Hoffmann climbs atop the table shaking violently – it’s an out-of-body experience, if you will. Wormhole conjures a type of hopelessness and anguish that one rarely feels in a production, made more visceral by the complete control Hoffmann exercises over both the performance and stagecraft. 

Collins Dictionary named “permacrisis” – defined as an extended period of instability and insecurity – its word of the year for 2022. Wormhole of Our Formation embodies the term most vividly. The show is transcendental work. Part immersive theatre, part sonic installation and part art installation, Wormhole is a formidable piece of performance about the deep searing pain one feels as they lose control of life, a prescient warning of a future marked by an ageing population, climate crisis, and economic collapse. Hoffmann screams on our behalf.

Producer: Arly Bean
Assistant: Ash McNaughton
Lighting Designer: Marty Langthorne
Sound Designer: Lottie Lou Poulet
Dramaturg: Eirini Kartsaki
Costume Designer: Lara Buffard
Additional Directorial Support: Louise Mari
Hair: Ziggy Gaji
Captioner: Jen Aviv

This production has concluded its run at the Battersea Arts Centre