Review: We Wild Things, Old Red Lion Theatre

I entered an already warm room upstairs at the Old Red Lion Theatre and found it to be filled with smoke. Walking through the haze to my seat, I glimpsed a set made of metal barrels, footlockers and an electric guitar. It all appeared strange and alien in the mist and low light. This was the perfect introduction to the world of We Wild Things, a story set outside the normal confines of space and time that transported me to its peculiar world.

Set on an unknown island, Mira returns after ten years away to Cal, who has lived wild on the island his whole life. Through a search for a lost book and flashbacks the story of Mira and Cal’s relationship when she was stranded on the island is filled in.

The story riffs on The Tempest and captures the otherworldliness of Shakespeare’s play. Caroline Lezny’s writing is deep, the dialogue naturalistic, and gives insight into the characters and the world they inhabit.

The setting is rich. It feels outside time and space. Nods to The Tempest and other cast away stories, like Robinson Crusoe, give it a historical feel, but the presence of mobile phones and an electric guitar, and references to supermarkets, make it feel distinctly modern. This adds to the atmosphere of being out of time.

There are many philosophical allusions without writers and ideas being awkwardly named-dropped. Thomas Hobbes’s idea of the violent state of nature vies with Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s ideas of the noble savage and an ideal pre-civilised world, in the character of Cal, who is both recognisably a man and wild. Mira stands in for the outside world, at the same time powerful and vulnerable – a thin veneer away from savagery, but also destroying the ideal secluded island by bringing in ideas from the outside.

These philosophical ideas extend into an environmental metaphor as the narrative moves between past and present, and the island has been damaged by ideas of power from the outside. Cal has built himself a palace and is consuming the island. The balance of untouched nature has been disturbed, and the actions of people are destroying nature. The exploration of these deeper ideas do not interfere with the relationship developments and the rising tension of the narrative.

Kathryn Stone as Mira and Ulysses Wells as Cal deliver excellent performances, immersing me in their characters. Their costumes are well designed, using old carrier bags and pieces of knitting to extend the strange aesthetic of the show to the characters. Throughout the story, narrative progression is shown as Cal’s clothing changes from ragged to a neat shirt and suit, while Mira becomes progressively disordered.

The set is vivid and helps to create the sense of the strange world; industrial and wild at the same time. This maximalist approach to set and costume – as well as the use of music throughout – create a more intense atmosphere than the usual fringe theatre minimalist approach to staging.

Leaving the world of We Wild Things and returning to the normal, cooler, world of a pub left me disoriented as my mind was still in the world of the play. A world that stayed with me for long after the end of the show.

Writer: Caroline Lezny
Director: Chloe Cattin
Set Designer: V Hayward
Costume Designer: Emma Wingfield
Original Music & Sound Designer: Ulysses Wells
Stage Manager: Beth Scott
Fight & Intimacy Coordinator: Emily Serdahl
Graphic Designer: Mark Owens
Executive Producer: Caroline Lezny
Associate Producer: Kathryn Snowe

We Wild Things plays at the Old Red Lion Theatre until Tuesday 25 August as part of SHAKEFEST 2026 at the Camden Fringe