Stage Review - The Things Around Us (Intiman Theatre)
Stage Review - The Things Around Us
Presented By: Intiman Theatre at Broadway Performance Hall - Seattle, WA
Show Run: April 24 – May 4, 2025
Date Reviewed: Satuday, April 26, 2025
Run Time: 90 minutes with no intermission
Reviewed By: Tucker Cholvin
A good two-for-one deal is hard to pass up no matter where you might find it. And Intiman has a compelling one on offer right now, in the form of The Things Around Us, a one-man show from Ahamefule J. Oluo, running through May 4. For 90 minutes, Oluo presents monologues and anecdotes interspersed with immersive and incredibly transcendent musical numbers on trumpet, clarinet, and improvised instruments. If presented on their own, either would be a powerful and compelling show. Together, they create something mesmerizing, powerful, and innovative that is worth seeing.
Presenting a solo show can be a risky, difficult high-wire act. But Oluo shows none of this; they speak and occupy the stage with gravitas and ease. As a speaker, a storyteller and a comic, they have an impressive ability to expand commonplace moments into profound ideas. Their storytelling is never pretentious or contrived – in part because they give the audience permission to laugh, early and often.
In the first minute of the show, they tell the audience about attending a similar experimental theatre show put on by a friend, and how they had to try desperately not to fall asleep. It produces a laugh from the audience in the first thirty seconds of the show – always a good sign – and it’s both self-effacing and ironic, because at no point in the next 89 minutes does Oluo allow the audience’s attention to wander.
Oluo draws inspiration both from experiences of their everyday life – misguided late night Facebook posts, learning to play basketball – and the stories and trajectories of others. The topics can appear disparate: a trumpet gig gone wrong, the formation of the rings of Saturn, a friend’s mother’s struggle with cancer and divorce. Through all of them, Oluo weaves both keen observations of how life can be chaotic, arbitrary and often cruel, and a heartfelt appreciation for what people make of circumstance.
The same nuance and effortlessness characterize Oluo’s music and their playing. Their compositions, which they build and blend gradually using a looper pedal, are deeply immersive. Oluo layers trumpet and clarinet, uses cardboard boxes or their own voice for percussion, and does it with the same light touch that imbues their monologues. By the end of each piece, when something akin to a symphony emerges, the complexity and enormous skill of constructing it live onstage becomes impossible to ignore.
Either aspect of Oluo’s performance – the music, the monologue – is a masterstroke. And while they could each stand alone, together they build something much more than the sum of their parts. The result is a 90-minute journey that allows the audience to laugh as much as to reflect. More compellingly, it’s a privileged chance to watch an artist at work in peak form in a rare intimate setting.
Ahamefule J. Oluo’s The Things Around Us represents all that is wonderful about live theatre. No two shows are ever the same, their combination of monologues and music could never be replicated, and all of the components combine to create an experience level that is greater than the sum of its parts. A one-person show that feels like a autobiographical symphonic ensemble, The Things Around Us is full of nuance, emotion, and the depth of personal experience, it’s a show that shouldn’t be missed.
Intiman Theatre’s presentation of Ahamefule J. Oluo’s The Things Around Us runs on stage at the Broadway Performance Hall in Seattle through May 4. For more information, including ticket sales and availability, visit https://www.intiman.org/.
Photo credit: Alex Dugan
