REVIEW: LOOP by Tanya Loretta-Dee at Theatre 503 10 – 29 November 2025
‘Tanya Loretta-Dee is infinitely watchable, very engaging, and a performer of great promise’ ★★★ ½
Tanya Loretta-Dee has written a one-woman show about sexual obsession, which she is now performing, with direction from Sophie Ellerby. She tells the story of a young woman, Bex, who works in Peckham selling stuff for parties. A handsome, charming, gorgeous guy comes in and, who’d have thought? It turns out he’s a wrong-un with a wife at home and a baby on the way.
Bex knows he’s a wrong-un but she’s drawn to him anyway, a mixture of obsession and self-loathing and horniness. The play explores the impact this has on Bex, on her friends, on her relationship with her mother. It also alludes to folk tales and primal imagery, with Bex morphing into a witchy, behorned forest creature. The forest-creature Bex is a far more threatening creature than the Bex who makes balloon animals, which is perhaps the point, but she remains very separate from the young woman enmeshed in a bunch of bad choices.
It’s a powerful acting performance. It’s an interesting and challenging script. It isn’t as coherent as it needs to be, the witchy motifs distract from rather than illuminate the doomed affair. A straightforward telling of the story might have made the moments of character development - where Bex re-sets her relationship with her mum, where Bex is at odds with her best friend – more insightful. Alternatively, a supernatural tale of witchy vengeance on men who mistreat women might have had more bite. The piece fell into a space between the tellings, which made it lose power.
That said, Cheng Keng has provided a glimpsy lighting design with lots of effective shadows, Mydd Pharo’s design uses bits of mattress in cunning and imaginative ways, the look and the feel of the whole show is compelling, and Tanya Loretta-Dee is infinitely watchable, very engaging, and a performer of great promise. Having a bunch of good ideas that aren’t quite tied together is so much better than not having the ideas in the first place.
Ninety minutes of intriguing witchery combined with a morality story of a maiden led astray, all happening on a striking set with a warm and witty performer. It runs at Theatre 503 until 29th November and it makes the journey to Battersea worthwhile.
Loop
10 - 29 Nov 2025
Written by Tanya-Loretta Dee
Directed by Sophie Ellerby
BOX OFFICE https://theatre503.com/whats-on/loop/
Patsy Browne-Hope (Movement Director)
Cheng Keng (Lighting & AV Designer
Jamie Lu (Sound Designer & Composer)
Mydd Pharo (Designer)
Futures Theatre (co-producer)
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Photography: Zoë Birkbeck
