‘CREEKSHOW’ (Venue 82, until AUG 27th)

“If the Deptford Necker had a lighter, brighter, sweeter little sibling, Witzel would be them.”

Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone? Jenny Witzel’s show is a love letter to Deptford Creek, a social history chronicling all that makes this part of east London unique. There’s a housing crisis in the UK, had you noticed? In our broken not-quite-beyond-not-just-yet-repair society, it is those with the least who struggle and suffer the most. If the Pandemic taught us anything, it’s that we are not all in the same boat even when we are all in the same storm. Some of us are on yachts. Some of us are barely clinging to the wreckage of shattered hopes and dreams. In Deptford, according to the statistics, many, many of us are early-generation Brits putting down roots and building our place in the landscape.

So understanding the disruptive nature of disruption matters. There’s a moment in the story when Witzel describes donning a pair of waders to explore Deptford Creek at low tide. Amid the layers and layers of history, is the more recent detritus of sprawling city life. Rusting mattresses. Shopping trollies. Assorted metal crap that I would have thought needs hoiking out and taking down the recycling centre. Wrong. Nature doesn’t know what an apple orchard is. To the dryads and nymphs, mature woodland is mature woodland. Similarly, for the fauna and flora of a tidal creek those abandoned metal whotnots and doobries are an essential refuge from predators and the elements – what us ape-descended life forms like to call ‘home’. Clean-up efforts need to be sensitive and not so dramatic as to actually do more harm than good.

Deptford has rarely been fortunate when it comes to sensitive re-developments. Aboard her houseboat, itself an exemplar of upcycling as public and domestic art, Witzel can see the impact the latest bout of gentrification is likely to have. There is nothing new under heaven as Deptford’s post-war slum clearances and social housing projects are rebooted in the current generation as luxury apartment complexes and high-end shops.

‘CREEKSHOW‘ is a polemic beautifully written and performed. For me, it’s the material history examined wot won it. Mudlarking awakens in all right-feeling people, young and auld, a sense of wonder and excitement as the past emerges into the light of day. The objects Witzel shares are evocative of the proximity and distance of the past. The multimedia elements are graceful as a tea ceremony.

On stage, Witzel draws us in with a magical, folkloreic combination of approachable mystery. If the Deptford Necker had a lighter, brighter, sweeter little sibling, Witzel would be them. There are occasional pacing issues all but inevitable in a show that started life as a 25mins seedling – at APT Gallery in April 2022 – and which grew into a 50mins sapling – as part of Deptford X Festival in September 2022. I would also have liked to see some interior photographs of Witzel floating home to describe later to Daughter 1.0 (8yrs) who dreams of one day living aboard a houseboat. Still, if not quite yet all the way to Tilbury, this is a show with the heart and stomach of a king, and a king of England too.

Come for the lyrical and the magical. Stay for the unclouded insight into as how fings ain’t wot they used to be. Get your waterproofs on and go see this!