Liv Ello: Swarm
07 February 2023
Vault Festival
4.0 out of 5.0 stars
Another trip to the Vault Festival for Liv Ello’s Swarm, a dark comedy style show that relies of video installation and comedic performance to tackle the dehumanising rhetoric of Tory governments when it comes to immigrants and refuges.
Ello embodies a series of different fly species to poke fun at society and make big emotional statements about the ways conservative governments have framed immigration in recent decades. With harrowing video accompaniments, Ello weaves a dark web of allegories and impassioned commentary on recent political events. While some of the video presentation flies by at lightning speed, too fast to fully read and grasp the severity and details of what is being presented, the show is an emotional examination of how social issues have been tackled by successive governments in the UK.
Utilising character comedy and spoken word poetry, Swarm takes on the view that migrants are “swarming” our country to ruin it, and examines the dehumanising language used to portray the people othered by popular media and influential politicians.
At times hilarious, at times devastating, Swarm is a not-to-be-missed show delving into how a lack of compassion and constitutional detachment have framed humanitarian crises, and what we can do to change our world for the better.