The Sound of Being Seen
From the moment Lucas touches the piano, the room shifts. She talks about how sound — vibration, really — connects us all, how it travels through the particles in the air and makes the very lights flicker. And, somehow, as she speaks, it starts to feel completely true, writes Luigia Minichiello.
The ‘Elephant’ in the room? It’s the piano itself — its keys bound in painful history, each note carrying weight. And yet there’s magic in that piano and in her story.
She tells us how it arrived — swinging through the window like a pirate ship, mid-air and full of promise. It’s a perfect image: wild, theatrical, a bit absurd. Much like Lucas herself.
The stage is minimal, rotating gently as she moves through chapters of her life, from a wide-eyed seven-year-old to a woman fighting to be heard in the music industry. Her storytelling is rich, but never heavy-handed—one moment we’re laughing at her French mother’s refusal to cook curried goat (“You can eat quiche!”), and the next we’re sitting quietly with her as she navigates what it means to be brown and middle-class in a very white, middle-class world.
There’s a gentle humour and a sharp honesty in how she recounts her journey, how her heritage is either exoticised or erased, how the record labels tried to sell her story but only if it was “toned down”. It’s no wonder things eventually unravelled.
At the heart of it all is a young woman falling in love with her drummer. Their connection is instant, electric, and full of understanding — something Lucas has never known before. Together, they throw themselves into their music, both equally driven, both burning with talent.
The road isn’t the same for both. He, a posh white boy, glides through doors that barely crack open for her. While he lands the gigs and gains the attention, she finds herself fighting twice as hard just to stay in the room.
And then comes the moment that breaks the spell: meeting his parents. A quiet, devastating confrontation with privilege that says everything. It’s too much. The pressure to fit, the ache of not being enough in their world. She hits the self-destruct.
This is, without doubt, an astonishing performance by an exemplary talent. After ninety minutes, the standing ovation was more than deserved.
Lucas doesn’t just play the piano, she lets it speak. And in that flickering, vibrating space, we were all lucky enough to hear it.
Catch this before it goes up West.
Menier Chocolate Factory until June 28th.
Booking and full details: https://www.menierchocolatefactory.com/tickets/elephant/
