The disorienting gloom of the Ivy Bar venue is appropriate to the kind of show that’s about to commence. I know something of what to expect because of seeing Patrick Carroll’s 2014 Toi Wahakaari Go Solo show, from which this one has developed. 

Our hero unfolds from his foetal crouch. He is flanked by buckets, one containing water, the other clay. His body is daubed liberally with more clay. And his face… well, you just have to venture into this netherworld and see it.

Carroll is a gifted physical performer. His bizarre, humanoid character conveys delight, dismay, fear, curiosity, love and shame in a kind of eloquent pre-speech language. A story unfolds in coos, barks and groans, shivers, cringes and a slowly increasing vocabulary of gestures. They explore an idea of innocence in a lump of (initially) featureless clay.

The moulding and manipulation of the clay evokes a process of burgeoning consciousness and self-awareness, playful exploration of Self and Other, the growing complexities of identity, gender, sexuality and shame. It’s like watching someone excavate themselves from the earth.

I don’t like to detail too much because Layman should just be witnessed first-hand. But he’s a creature with the qualities of a child, a creature in whom we recognise ourselves but who confronts us with the underside of humanness – those treacherous borderlands of the grotesque and the transgressive. Along with the shuddery horror and uneasy fascination, there’s a sharp pathos, an empathy with this vulnerable half-formed creature that makes it all the more uncomfortable and impossible to look away.  

There’s fearless confrontation, too, of taboos around public nakedness and sexuality. Two audience members are invited into a rather demanding participatory effort that is queasily hilarious and strangely moving, but correspondingly pushes some serious boundaries. The audience members involved handle it with due aplomb, but it is risky territory, not for the delicate. 

With director Anya Tate-Manning, Carroll has worked his extraordinary 2014 piece into a deeper, more articulate narrative with the same visceral power. I do get the feeling this now nearly hour-long work could be pared down, not much, but proportionately, to retain the temporal tautness of the compact Go Solo piece.  

Though there are comparisons and influences to be inferred – especially Olivier de Sagazan, and I’m frequently reminded of that gorgeous monster in Pan’s Labyrinth – you’ve never seen anything like Layman. Outlandish, deeply unsettling and unforgettable. 

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