Karen Hall’s Delusions and Grandeur is an unflinchingly honest and darkly comic take on the complex, often invisible cost to one’s existence as a professional artist. Before a note is played or a line delivered, Hall welcomes the audience with warm, unguarded conversation whilst munching on a Subway sandwich. It’s a clever touch, putting us at ease before pulling us into the tension that underpins her life.

During the ‘official’ show, Karen plays excerpts of Bach’s Cello Suite No1 and as she removes layers of clothes, she slowly lays bare the myriad of  conundrums in a professional musician’s life. At the heart of the piece lies her relationship with the cello—an instrument she both reveres and resents. Hall’s angst around being seen solely as a cellist is palpable. Could she have been something else? Would that path have offered more freedom, or just different constraints? Her cello is not just a tool but an extension of her very being. And yet, when things go wrong, it’s her fault—not the cello’s.

She weaves humour and heartbreak in her reflections on the precarious world of arts funding. Musician’s careers teeter constantly on a knife-edge—rising maintenance costs for their instrument, expectations of near-religious care for it, and little recognition of the mental and physical toll exacted by such devotion.

Hall’s performance is precise, poetic, and unflinchingly personal.  I certainly left the theatre with a greater appreciation of classical musicians, not just classical music.

Reviewed By Rona