Salt – Riverside Studios

A bitter song for a bloody story, Contemporary Ritual Theatre brings a strange and slippery offering to Riverside Studios, weaving dance, song, and dialogue in a summoning circle of rope and sweat that ensnares its audience and holds them in a merciless grip well beyond the threshold of pleasure.

The play’s brutal stranglehold on its audience is a testament to its enigmatic and often energetic performing corps comprised of veteran actor Emily Outred as the Widow Pruttock, Contemporary Ritual Theatre regular Mylo McDonald as her son Man Billy, and relative newcomer Bess Roche as Sheldis, the strangely seductive interloper in their squalid little life whose lascivious ways threaten to upend the little order they are able to impose in their chaotic sea ruled community. Composer and musical director Anna Pool creates an impressive sonic environment with only three voices and a few props but unfortunately the effect is more often alarming than interesting.

This is a shouty play, powered more by rage than plot and an ugly play with costumes by Amanda Harrold tracked in a filth that can also be detected under the fingernails of each of its performers. It’s nastiness infiltrates the audience as well, as the cast weaves in and out of the crowd imbuing them with an extremely uncomfortable complicity in increasingly alarming events.

Although this production does indeed have the bite to follow its bark, it doesn’t communicate much beyond spite. Its spitfires burn brilliantly but they fail to ignite the audience and writer-director Beau Hopkins’ choice to prioritize spectacle over substance results in an effective peacocking that holds audiences’ attention only for as long as it demands it. Technically competent and even invigorating in its best moments, Salt ends up mired in the muck it takes so much sensual pleasure in excavating and uncovers nothing in the end.

Salt runs until 15th March at Riverside Studios.

Reviewer: Kira Daniels

Reviewed: 4th March 2026

North West End UK Rating: