London – A Bloom Of Consciousness. Bloomsbury Festival.

Bloomsbury is an unusually heterogenous district, even for London. The eastern segment has dense social housing inhabited by a long-standing ethnically and culturally diverse population. The western part boasts some of the UK’s most important cultural, academic, and educational institutions, with a transient mixture of international and domestic students and an enduring traditional of literary and artistic creativity.

No wonder perhaps that the neighbourhood’s high-profile and hugely influential annual festival, currently concluding its 17 year, offers up such a manifestly eclectic mix of contemporary arts, music, performance, theatre, science displays, talks, walks, and community events. Rukmini Sircar, Jamil Luzuriaga Velasquez, and Shuyi Gao’s site specific “performance walk” London: A Bloom Of Consciousness certainly embodies the festival’s diversity and eclecticism, if not necessarily its trademark intellectual accessibility.

Billed as a “site-specific, immersive soundscape and dramatic tour of Bloomsbury” the event involves following the three performers as they dance, sashay, and parade along the district’s byways, twirling Mary Poppins’ style umbrellas as they go, while tuning in to a stream-of-consciousness style audio track. Think a silent disco-style mashup of poetry, prose, new age music, architectural description, and excerpts from Virginia Woolf’s writing.

London: A Bloom Of Consciousness proves to be a broadly entertaining way of passing 35 minutes on a sunny Sunday afternoon, even if it never entirely obvious what the point of the conceit is. The disembodied collection of tailors mannequin parts the performers collect along the way (a hand here, an arm there, and impressively buxom assortment of torsos poking out from a red phone box) do not necessarily clarify matters much.

At one point China-originating performer Shuyi Gao remonstrates at her audience though a loud-hailer. It is testing to hear what she is saying over the audio track, but it amuses the orbiting Deliveroo drivers no end, so one supposes it hit its mark. Suitably enough for a show that seems mired in post-colonial angst, it ends outside the British Museum.

Indian National School of Drama alumna Rukmini Sircar provides a mellifluous and engaging voice for most of the soundscape’s spoken elements. Peruvian performer Jamil Luzuriaga Velasquez, bedecked in a period green skirt and puffy black chemise, is a particularly appealing guide. She handles the wind-driven umbrella implosion with determined professionalism.

The show blurb suggests the event is about three immigrant women negotiating a relationship with Bloomsbury through a meditation on Virginia Woolf. Quite possibly it is, but the conclusions they arrive at, if any, are nebulous at best. One gets the ultimate impression the trio rather like this part of London. Quite right too, there is very little to dislike here and much to wonder at.

Writers and Directors: Rukmini Sircar, Jamil Luzuriaga Velasquez and Shuyi Gao