A night at the theatre with Julia Jacklin
Walking to the Lyric Theatre in the heart of London’s West End, I had a clear vision of how the night would go. For three nights across the month, Julia Jacklin is replacing the regularly scheduled performances of Hadestown to deliver a stripped-back show full of folk-flecked indie wonder instead. There is no new album to promote, no stage, no band; just her, an electric guitar and her songs in a stunning surrounding. With that in mind, I envisioned a hushed silence.
My expectation was simple: a wordless disconnect as Jacklin uprooted herself from the often parasocial role of the indie musician to merely be a performer or an artist. I envisioned a show that demanded the crowd merely be an audience watching rather than the typical gig crowd, a wall for which Jacklin could fire her emotional bullets without so much as a cough out of place. But by the time she took her bows after a show marked by incredible intimacy, I was wrong.
It all comes down to the theatre setting. There is something about these hallowed locations that changes the pre-determined atmosphere of musical performances. At a time when people are talking a lot about the gig etiquette, or the seemingly ever-growing lack thereof, as people film every second of a show with their whole arm outstretched, video themselves singing along with the flash on or talk through every song they aren’t screaming along to, the theatre feels like the last bastion against it. It’s a place where those rules are not only enforced by stewards who will tell you to put your phone down or won’t reopen the doors if you decide to annoy everyone by getting up and out of your mid-aisle seat mid-way to go get a drink, but they’re almost always followed anyways, simply because something in the hall wills them too. Theatres echo a respect for tradition, so people seem to sit down, shut up and respect the performers, too.
I expected the same of Jacklin, and for a while, the room did just that. Throughout Jacob Diamond’s support slot, it was pin-drop quiet apart from the loud applause punctuating each track. His silencingly beautiful songwriting propels the kind of performance that requires such attention, but the looming chandelier and classic interiors certainly helped.
After an interlude where some people even indulged in the classic theatre ice cream, the mood continued as Jacklin stepped out on stage. With no band behind her, it was a stark and gripping display of her talent. As she began with ‘Be Careful With Yourself’, it was almost impossible to hold back tears as the potent lyrics hit my eardrums, seemingly, for the first time. It’s a song I’ve loved for a while, but with no space to sing along and no distractions to just being there and actually paying attention, they hit like poetry; “Please stop smoking, want your life to last a long time / If you don’t stop smoking, I’ll have to start, shorten mine / When you go driving, would you stick to the limit? / I’m making plans for my future and I plan on you being in it.”
It was clearly the main takeaway from this show’s incredible beauty. In the hushed and respectful room, where absolutely nothing about the crowd was distracting or annoying, we could all truly focus on the talent in front of us. Jacklin’s voice sounded better than ever, her lyrics more poignant, and the amazing craft of her songs on full spotlighted display. As she moved through her tender, introspective tracks, this felt like the ultimate setting to hear them in.
If the audience had presented itself as a wall, it became clear that the most impressive part of this performance was how Jacklin removed the distance between the crowd and the artist brick by brick. With all those expectations of a distant theatre show, Jacklin reached her arm through the gap and out to us as she told silly, slightly awkward anecdotes that clearly hadn’t been planned. She threw out her setlist to play a track from Jesus Christ Superstar instead just because she felt like it, defying the rehearsed energy of her venue. She even called out to the crowd, inviting us to pick what songs she should do, disrupting the whole husted atmosphere of the room to instead turn it into a collaborative space where our group picked out ‘Hayplain’ and got treated to a newly written track that she assures us she’ll never release.
At one point, she steps out from behind the mic to talk person to person about the ongoing violence in Palestine, addressing the room with a poignant discussion about her feelings of helplessness being up there when she quite simply doesn’t know what to say about it all, rather than a polished, self-gratifying political speech. Then, in the final moments of her set, she addresses the elephant, telling us that she knows it feels odd in a theatre, but we are allowed to sing along.
By the end of the night, the show somehow felt like one of the most intimate experiences of my recent days, despite it being set in a venue where intimacy and mutual experience are the last things usually created. Instead, without the separating barriers between artist and audience or the stuffiness of strict rules, the theatre was broken down to its core role. In the beautiful, elaborately decorated hall, the Lyric Theatre served to glorify the artist and give the art the kind of respect and glory it deserves. With all attention focused on her voice and lyrics, Jacklin proved herself to be a true talent, and that’s what truly matters, not showmanship.
