Missing play found at York Theatre Royal as Gecko look for lost souls

Suffolk physical theatre company Gecko make their Yorkshire debut at York Theatre Royal with a four-day run of artistic director Amit Lahav's play Missing from October 17 to 20, promising "visual, visceral, ambitious theatre crafted to inspire, move and entertain, while putting the audience at the heart of the narrative".

The show itself went "missing" after its first run at Battersea Arts Centre was interrupted by a disastrous fire on March 13 2015. "A fire broke out that ultimately destroyed the Grand Hall and all the physical elements of our show; absolutely everything was lost," recalls Amit. "As the bell tower crashed through the roof, I remember finding myself kneeling on the road thinking, 'What do I do now?'.

"But it precipitated a phenomenal response from the whole industry and beyond and brought about this incredible phoenix moment where we came back with a not so much reinvented but reinvigorated version that's given the show a new life force.

"I have never felt so much love and affection for Gecko as in the days that followed the fire from colleagues, venues and arts companies around the country and around the world. It was strangely one of the most uplifting and affirming experiences of my life."

Gecko's Missing promises a "tantalising multilingual vocal landscape"

This generous help from Gecko’s audiences and the theatre industry ensured that Missing’s set was rebuilt in only eight days ahead of a tour of Mexico. A triumphant return to the reopened Battersea Arts Centre is now being followed by a British tour of a devised show that began life in 2012 and has since toured Russia, China, Georgia, Malta, Colombia, Mexico, Hong Kong, Macau and across Britain. York will be the only autumn location, other than Battersea, before the tour resumes in the spring.

Now in their 17th year, Gecko have developed seven full-length shows, with Missing being the oldest still in performance to complement the likes the company's newest and most ambitious work, The Wedding. Missing takes a "deliciously warped journey into the depths of the human psyche as it follows Lily, a woman whose soul appears to be decaying.

"She is very successful in life and love but something is missing: the ghosts of her past haunt her as she witnesses how her parents fell wildly in and out of love and the consequences this mixed cultural relationship has had on her life," says Amit, who performs the 70-minute show with Chris Evans, Anna Finkel, Katie Lusby and Ryen Perkins‐Gangnes.

In Gecko's distinctive style, Missing combines choreography and a "tantalising multilingual vocal landscape" as it invites audiences to pause and consider how far we have strayed from who we are and where we came from.

Through the years, Amit has created an organic devising process that "oscillates between intense periods of experimentation, making brave leaps, learning and failing", utilising choreography, writing, storyboarding and reflection.

"It provokes you into entering the narrative of your life into the story," says Gecko artistic director Amit Lahav

"The first seedlings of Missing were sown in Madison, Wisconsin, and the following year I started to explore them with the company at Warwick Arts Centre, Northern Stage and our Ipswich base," says the artistic director. "It takes me three years to make a Gecko show. In the first year, which I call 'the thinking year' but is more of a 'feeling' year, I do a broad range of residencies with sketch pads, holding workshops with diverse people, allowing me to test my snapshot feelings about the world at that time.

"The shows then emerge out of an organic process, starting with how I feel about myself and then exploring it further. Missing, for example, has never stopped being written. I've never made anything with a definite end point. I'm always looking at a more refined form of what's going, not always to make it 'cleaner', but sometimes to 'de-clarify' this incredibly experimental piece in seven languages to add to the perception of what's going on, rather than being essential to what's going on. I never leave it alone!"

The result is an evocative, provocative piece of theatre where "the possibilities of two people sitting next door to each other coming up with completely different interpretations are vast because it provokes you into entering the narrative of your life into the story," says Amit.

"Through the process of opening your heart to the piece, you find yourself drifting through the corridors of your life, and afterwards people come up to me and say 'this show is about me', even though it isn't directly about them.

"I'd go a stage further than that and say that it's the intention of Gecko in all our work....," he pauses. "...it's a bit like imagining you're dissecting Picasso's paintings with him; we know there's a woman at the centre of the painting but there are all sorts of invitations that loop you into it to look at your own life."

As for what we should read into the title of Missing, Amit says: "Far more interesting and eloquent than me bumbling around what I think it means is hearing what everyone else thinks the play is about and what the title means."

Gecko's Missing runs at York Theatre Royal from October 17 to 20; 7.30pm plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees, with a post-show discussion on October 17. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk