This review was originally written for The Reviews Hub: https://www.thereviewshub.com/selfies-visas-and-how-i-pay-for-my-dinners-old-red-lion-theatre-london/

If you could make a show about your life, what would you include? This is the question that seems to ponder the mind of Anastasiya Ador in this fiercely personal one-woman show.

Selfies, visas and how I pay for my dinners takes audiences from Ador’s Belarusian childhood to her hunt for love, and a visa, in England’s capital, making a pitstop in India as her life is revealed to us in this reflective piece.

What makes this production interesting is its metatheatrical nature. Ador kicks the performance off with a homage to the leotard-filled music video of Eric Prydz’s Call on Me, before pausing mid-dance to reveal to the audience that ‘there is no show’. After a few awkward moments and a brief chat with her stage manager, Ador reveals that there should have been a show, but she had not made it yet, so if there was a show, this would be it.

It is a clever premise, and it enables Ador to reveal various moments from her incredible life in a way that does feel authentic rather than scripted. Ador’s performance is supported by a scruffy yet charming vision board for her ‘dream show’, which frames the small stage space, and several token props and costume pieces to move us from location to location.

Ador certainly looks at ease here, threading various life stories together with connecting dance routines and moments of physicality, which demonstrate her versatility. Significantly influenced by her time in India, Ador’s Bollywood-inspired segment is fun and, with encouragement for audience participation, works well to mimic the blend of different styles her ‘dream show’ wants.

The audience participation does somewhat both help and hinder the piece, but this is largely out of Ador’s control, beholden to whichever patron she chooses and their efforts, which on this occasion were varying. While this does hit the pace of the already quite short piece (coming in at just under an hour), there is something quite warm about this participation, when it works, drawing us into Ador’s life, rather than as a spectator.

Selfies, visas and how I pay for my dinners is a mixture of dance, song and comedy, and it is full of heart. There are moments where the piece becomes overtly political, which is not hard to grasp given Ador’s Belarusian roots, and the metatheatrical elements of the piece work, on the whole, although it does take a while for anything really to happen.

Ador has clearly had a unique start to life, and this is an enjoyable window into it.