Review: Handle With Care at Leeds Playhouse

“…a reminder that you never actually stopped knowing how to play—you just needed someone to ask…”

Handle With Care by Ontroerend Goed, Leeds Playhouse

By Sean Sable

I’m not sure at what point in our lives people stop asking each other if they want to play. Ten? Eleven? There is probably something in pre-teen anxiety that makes us think that finding a kindred spirit and simply exploring together is stupid. Or cringe. We’re young, so we can be forgiven for not knowing what we give up when we decide that passively observing, waiting our turn, holding back and keeping to ourselves is the way forward. It is rediscovering what we have lost that sits at the heart of Ontroerend Goed’s audience-led production, Handle With Care.  

The show truly begins as we’re waiting outside the doors of the Bramall Rock Void, sharing a feeling of excitement and a little trepidation. We’re there to engage in a show built on audience participation and it feels a little like our first day at school. We scan the crowd, sizing each other up. We know that by the end of the hour, we will have experienced something special together, something that will bring us closer. And we wonder which friendly face will be that other new kid who meets us on the edge of the playground and asks us if we want to play.

Ontroerend Goed, a Belgian ensemble who have been sending audiences into productive discomfort since 2007, conceived Handle With Care as the third piece in a trilogy their artistic director, Alexander Devriendt, calls An Hour Spent With Others. The concept and creation are credited to Devriendt, Karolien De Bleser, Samir Veen, Leonore Spee and Charlotte De Bruyne, with design by Nick Mattan and Edouard Devriendt. The premise is minimal. Leeds Playhouse receives a box in the post, places it on a stage, and from that moment forward, everything that happens next belongs to the audience.  

As soon as we walk in, we know we’re in Wonderland because, like Alice, we find a cryptic note waiting for us. It says that the show will begin when one of us opens the box. We look to one another, feet shuffling with anticipation and maybe a little anxiety. Who will open the box? Should I open the box? Or is that too bold? If I open the box, will I be taking an opportunity away from someone else? Suddenly, who I am – and who others perceive me to be – hinges on whether I choose to step forward.

After a few moments, a woman with pastel rainbow hair rises from her seat and the room cheers. She’s our hero, our catalyst, the mother of our production. From that moment, the play begins; working together to unpack the box, our story takes shape.

I don’t want to give away secrets; that would be terribly unfair. This is a production that demands discovery, invention, rule-following and rule-breaking. If I tell you about the events that follow, I’ll influence the outcome, potentially breaking the spell. But what I can say is that the hour has a loose structure. There are scenes with a suggested order, tasks with suggested timeframes, and clear guidance: nothing you do is wrong. How you choose to engage with the structure is up to you, both as an individual and as a group. Do you follow the outline of the play or chart your own path? It is in this space between what we ought to do, what we want to do and what we do…do… that the experience lives.

At one point, a man steps forward and pulls out the next envelope without being prompted. At first, this feels transgressive. How dare he violate the sacred structure of the envelopes? But once that feeling passes, the mood changes. He has given us permission. Freedom.

Midway through, messages arrive from previous audiences—people who sat in rooms like ours, in other cities, in other languages, and made their own version of this same hour. We hear about their experiences, and I find myself wondering what kind of influence they are having as time travellers, their blind hand reaching into the future. When they tell us that they set their box on fire, does this change what we do next? I suspect so.

By the end, a little community of twenty-five friends forms. People swap Instagram details and organise drinks after the show. And although it feels a little inevitable, it didn’t really have to be that way. We could have been the lesser devils of our nature, holding back and creating chaos. But that’s not often what happens when groups of disparate people come together. Despite what the news might want you to believe, society is not full of misanthropes teeming with individualistic rage. No, we are all just kids hanging out on the edge of the playground, hoping someone else asks us to be their friend.  Handle With Care is an hour-long reminder that you never actually stopped knowing how to play—you just needed someone to ask. The contents of the box must remain a secret, but you can discover it for yourself. All you have to do is arrive with an open heart and the rest will take care of itself.

Handle With Care plays at Leeds Playhouse until Saturday 28 March.

Sean Sable is a Yorkshire-based freelance writer and editor specialising in Young Adult and Horror fiction, frequently at the same time. When she isn’t buried under a pile of books and manuscripts, she is looking for her keys and having extensive one-sided conversations, in Swedish, with her deaf cat. You can find her online at: www.seansable.co.uk