This is the second time I’ve come across the work of physical theatre company Teatro dei Gordi. The first was Pandora, a production set in a public bathroom so funny, strange and precise that I spent months recommending it to people afterwards. I was looking forward to seeing what they would do next. Visite did not disappoint.
Teatro dei Gordi makes theatre that reminds you we speak in many ways. Words are only one of them. There is also movement, rhythm. In Visite, the company turns its attention to time: how it shapes friendships, bodies, habits, and the way joy and grief slowly accumulate inside a life.
Inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses and the story of Philemon and Baucis, the piece follows a group of friends from young adulthood into old age, tracing decades of shared life with remarkable precision and tenderness.
The company has an extraordinary eye for human behaviour: the tiny compulsions, rituals and repeated gestures that make someone instantly recognisable both as an individual and as part of something larger. Often there are no words at all. Sometimes there is not even a visible face, only the company’s trademark papier-mâché masks. Yet a slight tilt of the head or a thumb tapping softly against a hand tells you everything: desire, fear, embarrassment, affection, loneliness.
In under 70 minutes, the six performers create an entire world of flawed, vivid figures, from the quietly heartbreaking to the absurdly funny. Everyone seems to carry a life that exceeds what the stage can show. One elderly kleptomaniac obsessed with bonbons nearly stole the show.
What emerges from Visite is the sense that life is, before anything else, an exchange of energy. These characters exist through one another: through care, friction, memory, routine, presence. Teatro dei Gordi capture the fragile architecture of human connection better than most text-heavy dramas ever manage.
An immensely talented company, and one I hope London keeps inviting back. Their work feels like the antidote to much of what contemporary life is slowly stripping away from us.
Visite runs at the Coronet till 16th May https://www.thecoronettheatre.com/whats-on/teatro-dei-gordi-visite/
Reviewer: Klervi Gavet
Reviewed: 14th May 2026
North West End UK Rating:
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