75 litres of fake blood splattered my shoes in London’s most eccentric show

Blood Show at the Battersea Arts Centre review and star rating: ★★★★

75 litres of fake blood. Four different varieties of fake blood to make the liquid more realistic. Blood Show, playing a short run at the Battersea Arts Centre until this Saturday, is London’s most eccentric show – and well worth your time.

Somewhere in-between the splatterings and gore, this is a tender examination of masculinity, with two nameless male-presenting figures challenging one another to boxing jousts while absolutely soaked in blood.

But as ever with performance art, it’s better to let it wash over you than try to find any conventional narrative.

There’s an operatic ghost (yes, those words are in the right order) ominously circling the makeshift boxing ring. They go from seeming like a rather effervescent, floating object to something more like a menacing oppressor, occasionally chasing the two boxers out of the ring and exhibiting more force than the strong fighters ever do.

The jousters, one played by the show’s creator Ocean Chillingworth, engage in gripping fights, but the physicality is never quite believable, the playfulness and obvious choreography making you question your perception of violence and assumed forms of male interaction. The surreal atmosphere is helped along when they break the fourth wall to dump blood on the set to signify violence rather than actually hurting each other.

Ocean and fight director and co-performer Craig Hambling douse the stage in literal bucketloads of fake blood (some of which splattered on my new white trainers; everyone’s given a poncho on arrival and I’d suggest you wear it!) It’s incredibly satisfying watching something so rogue happening against the Victorian splendour of the Battersea Arts Centre, a formerly opulent town hall and now one of London’s most gorgeous fringe theatres.

Musical performer-turned ghost Tim Bromage gets the most obviously evocative parts with his operatic singing, especially in the final moments when he performs Martha Wainwright’s Bloody Mother F**king Asshole, warbling the line “I wish, I wish, I wish I was born a man”. Arresting and brilliantly bonkers.

Blood Show runs at the Battersea Arts Centre until 23 November

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