You Are Here

All of this felt like a massive waste of energy.

Happy Bank Holiday Monday to you,

To the Southbank Centre, then, for You Are Here: a sitewide immersive fusion of dance, music, fashion and art, celebrating and remixing 75 years of pioneering British culture.

Outside the Royal Festival Hall, ashen-faced actors stumbled through a miniature Blitz. Smoke, debris, stunned silence. Inside: a sticky disco floor, stale sweat, thumping bass. Back outside, 1950s Teddy Boys confronted Windrush arrivals in a violent territorial dance before a set strewn with revered British icons dumped on a rubbish heap. Seriously, I’m not kidding.

Other standouts? The Festival Hall transformed into a twinkling galaxy, a lone fiddler played, teenagers danced themselves to exhaustion, and a Shirley Bassey lookalike offered a glimpse into her dressing room. There was a large stunning glitter ball and rather than hang it from a ceiling they put it in the basement by the cloakroom for selfie obsessives. Up and down staircases. Joyless.

Appalling waste of public money? Completely different to what was promised, you say? Total fiasco, you say? My guess is it cost £1 million to produce; tickets were up to £55.00. Frankly, it would have been more conducive to hand out fifty pound notes to punters to watch the sun set.