★★★★
‘Papaioannou’s design sketches a world of rigid blocks and civic geometry — an IKEA manual for how to assemble a state. Only one thing glows with life: Peter’s bookcase, stuffed with volumes that spill onto the floor like ideas too unruly to contain.’
Ikon London Magazine
Written by Joel Marlin
Directed by Quentin Beroud
Set & Costume Design by Ismini Papaioannou
Light & Sound Design by Simon Beyer
Performed by Rosie Armstrong, Leah Aspden, David Fielder, Dan Nicholson, Joanna Ventura, and Paul Westwood
produced by Metal Rabbit Productions
Production Photography: Mark Senior & Ismini Papaioannou
The Statesman follows a village where laughter is outlawed, and a reluctant official is tasked with teaching people how to be funny after a forbidden giggle draws the Queen’s attention. Blending sharp political commentary with dry humour and heart, the play explores what happens when a community confronts what it has long suppressed.
The design creates a sterile, uncanny world in cold tones, where everything feels artificial and controlled. Plastic grass replaces nature, and every surface is flat and uniformly painted, almost Truman Show-like. The space reads like a life-sized Lego set, modular, precise, and faintly unreal. This rigid environment is broken only by Peter’s bookcase, the only place with character and personality, filled with vintage objects, books overspilling onto the floor.
Costumes heighten the contrast, villagers wear matching, medieval-inspired uniforms, while authority figures appear in bold council blue. The Queen enters in voluminous gold, a vivid presence in a world otherwise drained of life.