No President, written and directed by Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper, currently runs at London’s Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall until Friday, 11 July. This unapologetically strange and sprawling piece by the experimental US-based company Nature Theater of Oklahoma is unlike anything else I’ve seen.
Part dance performance, part dramatic reading, part physical farce — it is entirely absurdist in tone, structure, and ambition. The show demands attention, tests patience, and ultimately polarises its audience.
The story of No President follows two security guards and best friends, Mikey (Ilan Bachrach) and Georgie (Bence Meze), assigned to guard a mysterious red curtain. What begins as a surreal buddy comedy quickly spirals into a tale of romance, betrayal, violent rivalry, and occasional redemption. While the opposing troupe — a ballet-trained “security firm” — acts as the antagonists, the real driving force remains Mikey himself. Brilliantly played by Bachrach, whose physical performance and impressive stamina are highlights of the show, Mikey’s encounters with lovers, rivals, and surreal manifestations of temptation reveal a world shaped entirely by his egocentric perspective, where everything exists to reflect or challenge him.
Stylistically, it takes time to settle into the show’s rhythm. The delivery in No President is exaggerated to the extreme, with heightened facial expressions and free-flowing, loosely ballet-inspired movements. The performance is narrated entirely by a narrator–Devil (Robert M. Johanson), who reads the dense, whimsical, and wordplay-rich script non-stop, while the rest of the cast perform the scenes silently. Subtitles help decode the script’s complexity, but even with them, it can be hard to stay engaged at times.
As the performance progresses, slapstick body comedy takes over, featuring grotesque gags with meat props, colourful fabrics imitating bodily fluids, and surreal enactments of cannibalism, sexual interactions, and suicide. Visually playful but deeply off-putting, these moments often feel overlong and provoke discomfort rather than delight. Judging by the steady stream of walkouts throughout the evening, I wasn’t the only one left uncharmed.
Beneath this chaotic surface, No President gestures at deeper themes — personal freedom, control, passions, and obsessions. Yet these ideas remain underdeveloped, buried under visual clutter and absurdist gags.
The stripped-back staging uses the iconic red curtain as a constant backdrop, with scene changes marked by singular key markers such as a bed, sofa, or bathtub. While symbolic, this minimalism places pressure on the physicality and narrative logic, which don’t consistently deliver.
One of the most intriguing elements is the choice of soundtrack: the entire show is set to Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker. None of the story or choreography resembles the original fairy tale, and this contrast creates a nostalgic and vivid musical backdrop that highlights the radical difference between the two works.
No President is bold, bizarre, and bewildering. Its ambition is undeniable, but the uneven execution often tests the audience’s patience more than their curiosity.
Listings and ticket information can be found here
