Review: James Rowland, Learning to Fly & Piece of Work

By Alexei Warshawski

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

It has been a decade since James Rowland began performing and touring his solo shows. This week at Stratford East, he performed parts 1 and 2 of his trilogy titled ‘Songs of the Heart’, which he describes as being “tactile theatrical storytelling pieces that chart the span of James’ life in art and reflect upon the wonder of being human”. Broadly, these pieces of storytelling theatre are a success – they are moving, evocative, and powerful. 

We begin with Learning to Fly, the show tells the story of James’ life between the ages of 11 and 14, through an unlikely friendship formed with a neighbour in her 60s who lived alone. James movingly paints a vivid picture (ecstasy is involved), and yet it all feels strangely relatable, and encourages the audience to reminisce on their own childhoods. James as a scared 11-year-old who must spend the afternoon being minded by Ann, his elderly neighbour, an experience with neither of them relishes. 

Some of Ann’s first words to James are, “I don’t like boys”. But as this childminding becomes a regular occurrence, we see James and Ann develop a fondness for each other, which in part appears to come from the way that their relationship expands their respective understandings of the human experience. James is a child who struggles to attend school; Ann is a lonely woman who seems to rarely leave the house; and the power of James’ story is to show us the transformative potential of really relating to the experience of someone so different to yourself.

Throughout the show, the stage is minimally set. There is a record player, a small table, and later a chair; James is in a vest, tracksuit bottom, and trainers. Seeing this, I assumed that I would be listening to a story, a kind of recitation, which might be set to music for the next hour, rather than seeing a one-man play with James playing various characters from his past. In fact, the show was an astonishing mixture of both. There were differences in voice and movement as James illustrated moments of his friendship with Ann, but there were no costume changes, no performative bells or whistles to create any theatrical illusions. There was just the story, and in this lies the power of James’ show. 

His engaging and empathic manner of storytelling, with Beethoven in the background here and there, genuinely created rich and evocative images in my mind – I could see Ann’s living room, her garden, and in one of the show’s funniest moments, her bathroom. At just over an hour, this is a neat piece of storytelling which takes a specific chapter from James’ adolescence and manages to encourage the audience to reflect on the formative moments in their childhood, and indeed in our adulthoods too. By the interval, you know that you are in safe hands with James Rowland.

The second piece of the trilogy, Piece of Work (the third was not performed at Stratford East, but is being toured this year), jumps to James’ “middle year”, as he calls it. This piece is more convoluted than the first, lacking the focus that James’ friendship with Ann provided in Learning to Fly. Whilst still an impressive piece of storytelling and demonstration of James’ talents, this lack of narrative thrust did hold back the show’s potential.

Initially, this piece focuses on a letter James receives from an old family friend who encourages James to create a piece of theatre about his recently deceased father, and the way in which this affects James and his brother (a complex family relationship which James movingly illustrates). As the show progresses, however, it is unclear whether we are watching the show that James has been encouraged to create, or watching a show in response to this request, or watching a different show which includes a nod to this situation. 

James is open about the difficulties he had with his father, but is at pains not to make this the central feature of this show. Rather, the show focuses on the conflicted position James finds himself in, having had this request, weighing up the needs of those around him with his own. The show was at its best when engaging with Hamlet to explore some of these moments of conflict – James is an actor as well as a storyteller, and breathes life and power into passages of Hamlet, which clarified and grounded some of the more abstract themes of the show. 

The success of Learning to Fly is the strength and power of the singular story, which James uses as a jumping-off point to more widely explore meditations on human life and experience. Piece of Work feels as though it is about too many things to facilitate such a meditation. There is a neat bookending of the show in relation to the family friend who sent James the letter, but a wandering middle section does detract from the storytelling potential which James so skilfully showcased earlier.

James Rowland, Learning to Fly & Piece of Work has finished its run at Stratford East, but will be touring regionally till June 13th. Find tour dates and locations here: https://jamesrowlandtouring.com/

Photos by Murdo MacLeod