Het Hamiltoncomplex

Het Hamiltoncomplex / Het Paleis, Antwerp / August 2015

Direction: Lies Pauwels

Costume: Johanna Trudzinski

The Hamilton Complex is a performance by 13 thirteen-year-old girls and a bodybuilder. But who are these thirteen-year-old girls? Sometimes they all look alike, sometimes they’re just themselves. They quote, copy, and shamelessly confuse past and present. They pull the rug of certainty right out from under your feet. Nothing is what it seems. The Hamilton Complex promises to be a physical, visual but also philosophical production about those moments in life when things begin to change. But can a turning point also determine your identity? In The Hamilton Complex, fantasy and reality, past and present, thoughts and expressions, imitation and heroism merge into each other, sometimes smoothly, sometimes cheekily.

PRESS

"Chloe Lamford's utopian stage – rainbow overhead, plastic unicorn peeping out behind a curtain – turns into a warzone. Ours, perhaps, is a world that has lost its innocence. 

In short, it's stunning. Funny. Uneasy. Alarming. Affirming. Disarming and difficult. A piece that stands firm and holds our gaze. Theatre that treats us like grown-ups. I could go on, but you should just go."

Matt Trueman, Whatsonstage, 01-07-16

"...The stage turns from Chloe Lamford’s gorgeous, rainbow-hued fantasy land to a scene of devastation: the painful destruction of their childhood innocence is a metaphor for a world in turmoil."

Alice Saville, EXEUNT, 04-07-16