LONDON CITY NIGHTS

On Barren Hill (Work in Progress) by Charlotte CHW at the Old Net Loft, 21st May 2026

Werner Herzog described the jungle as "fornication and asphyxiation and choking and fighting for survival and growing and rotting away. Of course, there's a lot of misery. But it is the same misery that is all around us. The trees here are in misery, and the birds are in misery. I don't think they sing. They just screech in pain."

They're words that always come to my mind whenever someone's getting all dewy-eyed over the majesty of nature. It's always tempting to wax poetic about the prettiness of a falling leaf or whatever, but at its base level, nature is a frantic scrabble of organisms trying to kill each other in the hope they're lucky enough to reproduce and toss a fresh generation into this hell.

But what's your part in this cycle if you can't have kids? Do you just lie down in the mud and let yourself rot away? This question is at the heart of Charlotte CHW's currently unfinished On Barren Hill, which I very much enjoyed.

The piece is about her own experiences with infertility and how that affects her "connection to the natural world". That's evident from the moment you step into the performance space, which has a pleasant organic aroma from the small piles of moss on the ground and gathered ferns. It's also obvious before a single word is uttered, courtesy of an eye-catching "living dress" featuring more moss, lichen, and wool, designed to appear as if it's naturally formed itself around the wearer.

What follows is 90 minutes of poetry, dance, and singing - combined into a cohesive ritual. Leaving aside all the subjective analysis stuff for a moment, On Barren Hill is extremely entertaining throughout. Now, performance art doesn't need to be entertaining or even particularly enjoyable - but if you're doing a 90-minute show it really helps if it's both those things. 

This is. Frankly, there's probably enough going on in On Barren Hill to fill two shows. I particularly enjoyed the operatic singing as it's a performance element you can't really muddle your way through and hope for the best. That these musical parts are so successful underlines the effort that's gone into making the show a reality. By the time it's over, this effort is extremely visible on the (understandably) perspiring Charlotte, who's clearly thrown everything and the kitchen sink into making this the best show it can be.

My main takeaway from the show was a lingering and unresolved sense of injustice with the natural world. Everything in nature is swarming with reproductive life: from rock pools to forest floors to tree canopies to the inside of a cell. How can it possibly be fair that everything else in nature can be so obscenely and visibly reproducing itself, while some random quirk of biology shuts you out of the party?

Then you start to think of the unbroken chain of life connecting you to your parents, your grandparents, and so on, right back to some protozoic slime glued to the side of an ancient rock billions of years ago. All those millions of genetic links through time, and you left as the unfortunate full stop at the end of a very long run-on sentence.

There's no real upside or silver lining to any of this stuff, you just have to play the hand you've been dealt and try to make some sense of it all. And this is On Barren Hill, which is sprawling, raw, and messy - but these are sprawling, raw, and messy things to try and figure out. 

I loved this show in its unfinished form: the rougher edges made the message hit home harder. I'm also curious about where it goes from here!

On Barren Hill (work in progress) is at the Old Net Loft as part of the Brighton Fringe on 23 May 2026. Tickets here.