Undisciplined Festival: Horror and Tension in Marikiscrycrycry's 'Goner'
- Janejira Matthews
- Mar 14
- 3 min read
Repetition. Stability. A good beat. These are what characterise Malik Nashad Sharpe (aka Marikiscrycrycry)’s Goner.
Or so we thought.
Sharpe boogies around the stage to a funky but repetitive beat. Wearing only a pair of tight purple shorts and a woven pink plait hanging from the back of his neck, Sharpe’s hips tease, twerk and twitch through the first section of Goner, hitting and milking every Caribbean beat. Sharpe never faces the audience, his back a private barrier nudging viewers into voyeurism. His arms circle, sometimes he jumps with all four limbs stretching backwards, a backbend with legs lunging and arms softly reaching slows the pace. Then again. And again. And again. Just when the boredom kicks in…
Sharpe whips round. The lights go white. A stream of blood drooling thickly from his mouth threatens to flick the front row. The whites of his eyes are the last thing we see before pitch black.
What continues to unravel is an ode to horror. An impassive female voice orders: “2-2-2, please step into the shower.” A plastic sheet stretched taut over a rectangular frame encases Sharpe. Squatting low, reaching downwards with hands crackling, a monster emerges from Sharpe’s human form. Made invisible by his own shadow, something humanoid warps behind the plastic screen. A head vanishes, limbs elongate to nightmarish proportions. Sharpe stretches the pink cord up above his head, a reminder of the real-life horrors lived by the black body. Shadow and reality blur and fade, leaving a broken fragment of a man. He disappears, replaced by blood repeatedly chucked onto the inside of the screen. Blood with a jazzy pink hue. When he re-appears, a hand splits through the plastic. Tearing apart a skin separating us from a bad dream, he bleeds into our reality, a world apart from the funky dancing form just minutes before. Goner takes on an unmatched intensity designed to terrify, a twisted treat for adrenaline junkies.
Sharpe tells us about his seven friends. Especially memorable is Gabriel, sexually confident and utterly charming. Sharpe poisons them all. Yet, even when he dances in his darkest moments, humour and queerness permeates a psycho edge. When that cold voice rings “2-2-2, you may be punished,” Sharpe laughs in the face of authority with a little hand flick and a strut that showcases a proud identity. It introduces a lightness that makes Goner’s horror palatable without softening.
In its final moments, Goner culminates in a faceless fantasy. Sharpe dons a knitted mask with two shining black eyeless voids. He lovingly embraces a metal pole, at other times whacking it to cause destruction. A hanging caged light is struck, protesting in metallic twang. Screams and shouts chill the blood. The blank mask stares out at the audience, body arrested in a trembling rage. And 2-2-2 is punished in gunshots, little bloody lines marking his back. We are left with the shock of a murderer’s death, a murderer who was upbeat and funny. Goner captures a dark psychology, unpacking human complexities rarely seen in the light of day. It's shocking having a faceless figure disarm your sense of security in a theatre seat. Threatening.
I wipe my palms clear of sweat on my clothes.
***
You can catch more events at Brighton's Undisciplined Festival until 20th March. Find further information on South East Dance: https://southeastdance.org.uk/whats_on/undisciplined-2025/
