REVIEW: HAVE I RETURNED? @ GOLDEN GOOSE THEATRE

🎭 Have I Returned?

📍 Golden Goose Theatre, 146 Camberwell New Road, London, SE5 0RR

🗓 Sunday 18th September 2026

⭐️ 2 Stars

A BLINDING DISAPPOINTMENT

I arrived at the Golden Goose Theatre on Sunday night - a bit soggy from the rain - for a brand-new debut piece, HAVE I RETURNED?. Written and directed by Alan Ho, this one-off Lambeth Fringe stager promised a deep, expressionistic dive into the world of Lucian - a young blind man suddenly handed the chance to see after his estranged dad pops back into the frame. It sounds like a beautifully messy, heart-wrencher of a premise. Sadly, the reality was mostly just messy.

Look, you have to admire the sheer ambition here. Ho doesn’t play it safe. The production throws everything at the wall - physical theatre, ensemble movement, and heavily stylised lighting meant to mimic the jarring, untrustworthy rush of colours flooding Lucian's newly awakened eyes. On the odd occasion it works, it’s genuinely striking. There’s a sequence early on with the ensemble shifting shapes around Lucian that captured that claustrophobic sensory overload brilliantly. There's genuinely a lot of potential in this production, and the costume choices worked well too. I liked how everyone started in black, with more colours bleeding in as Lucian gained his sight.

But goodness knows, it gets bogged down in its own metaphors.

For a play dealing with the emotional fallout of hidden family truths, the script is incredibly on-the-nose. The dialogue frequently trades genuine human connection for abstract philosophising about "unreadable faces", and the emotional beats just get completely swallowed up by the frantic staging. Instead of feeling Lucian’s disorientation, I found myself getting pulled out of the story by ensemble transitions that felt more clumsy than avant-garde on the tight Golden Goose stage.

Talking of transitions, the scene changes took far too long, leaving us sitting in silence and darkness. For a play that uses music throughout its scenes, it was a strange choice to drop it entirely in these moments, making the gaps feel incredibly long and pointless.

The dialogue was also spoken so fast at times that I simply couldn’t make out what was being said. Everything just needs to slow down. With such a short runtime, there's plenty of opportunity to not only work on the pacing, but also to extend the script, filling in the gaps and fixing the narrative.

When it's finally revealed how he got his sight back, it is simply absurd. The plot holes run deep - not least how the father suddenly found and recognised his son out of nowhere. The performances are earnest, and there's no denying the cast are fiercely committed, but the central relationship never gets the breathing room it desperately needs to ground the chaos. It’s all style, very little substance.

I understand that this is a fringe production on a limited budget, but the gun prop looked so cheap - like it was plucked straight from a children's sheriff costume - that it became unintentionally comedic.

It’s always a shame when a fringe debut with this much conceptual promise falls flat. There is a genuinely poignant story buried somewhere under all those expressionist layers, but on Sunday night, it just felt like a student workshop that needed a sharp dramaturgical edit. A brave effort, but this one left me firmly in the dark.

A bold swing, but this expressionist experiment loses its sight lines.

Neill Kovacic-Clarke

All views are my own and I pride myself on being honest, fair, and free from influence. Theatre is subjective and it is important to remember that all views expressed are just those of one reviewer.  

My ticket for this performance of Have I Returned? was gifted by Aether Scriptorium, who invited me to watch the show in exchange for my honest review. The fact that my ticket was gifted played no part in the content of my review or the star rating given. 

CAST:

Alan Ho as Lucian; Hangming (Rowen) Zhang as Peregrine; Chenyin (Gloria) Gu as Sita (Core Ensemble); Max Garland as Felix and Ensemble; Kexin Song as Tommy and Ensemble; Ruonan (Nancy) Jiang as Cindy and Ensemble; Chanyin Long as Dr. Alex and Core Ensemble; Shuqi Yu as Rebeka and Ensemble

CREATIVES:

Director and Playwright - Alan Ho; Producer - Kexin Song; Movement Director - Liping (Hannah) Jiang; Fight Director - Siyi Huang; Co-Producer - Chenyin (Gloria) Gu; Assistant Director - Ruihan Xu; Dramaturg - Teresa Yang; Set Designer - Yiyun (TT) Zhang; Lighting Designer - Yiling Liu; Costume Designer - Yumu (Moon) Lin; Choreographers - Chenyin (Gloria) Gu and Ruonan (Nancy) Jiang

RUNNING TIME (approx):

40 minutes, with no interval

CONTENT WARNINGS:

Violence; Death; Bad language; Gun imagery; Gunshots; Extended blackouts

AGE RECOMMENDATION:

16+

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