By Beverly Andrews
Music/dance company Bullyache (the duo Jacob Samuel and Courtney Deyn) opened the Queen Elizabeth Hall’s season of work that is both queer and uncategorisable. Bullyache is an apt choice to launch this season since their work indeed defies category yet remains, as always, ultimately exhilarating.
Who Hurt You? opens with Deyn singing an original song from the circle above the audience before descending to the stage. He is followed by drag artist Barbs, who performs a Shostakovich piano solo beautifully—“mostly.” When small mistakes occur, she erupts into shouting obscenities at herself (or perhaps at the audience). It is a discomforting opening, presenting intentionally disconnected images placed side by side, a signal of how the piece will continue. Who Hurt You? is loosely inspired by both the excesses of the garish cult classic Showgirls and the human tragedy of Jake LaMotta as documented in Martin Scorsese’s masterpiece Raging Bull. For me, however, it is much more an examination of the artist’s quest for audience validation—one that almost always ends in tragedy, as the artist is inevitably rejected at some point by the very audience whose approval they seek.
As ever, Bullyache appears to draw on cinematic sources for inspiration, whether from French cinema master Jean Cocteau or German provocateur Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Pairs dance sensual duets and then seem to violently reject each other.
Those seeking a conventional narrative will be disappointed, as Bullyache deliberately rejects traditional structure and instead requires the audience to engage—to assemble the stories from the images provided. But if you let go of the desire for a conventional show, you will be richly rewarded with imagery that lingers long after the performance concludes. Bullyache creates work that, although not adhering to traditional storytelling, achieves something perhaps more important: it makes you think. And after all, isn’t that what art is for?
Beverly Andrews, London, November 11th, 2025.
