The reviews are in for Jess & Morgs: Deepfake, the new dance-theatre piece from Jessica Wright and Morgann Runacre-Temple, which played three nights at Sadler’s Wells East, 1-3 October. Co-commissioned with DanceEast and written with Jeff James, it stages a television interview in which a prime minister (Kennedy Muntanga) is pressed by a political journalist (Rebecca Bassett-Graham) about 24 missing minutes at a state dinner, while dancers in green-screen suits rebuild the scene live on camera above them. On the craft the critics are close to unanimous: The Reviews Hub and The Spy in the Stalls both give it five stars, and nobody faults the two leads or the precision of the staging. The Guardian is the cooler voice, finding the piece inventive but scattershot, and Seeing Dance feels the text sometimes spells out what the stage picture has already made plain.
The verdict: seven reviews in. Six carry a rating: two five-star notices, three four-star and one three-star, an average of 4.2 out of 5. Seeing Dance publishes no score. Every critic admires how tightly the live camera, the green-screen dancers and the two leads are knitted together; the reservations, from The Guardian and Seeing Dance, are about tone and over-explanation rather than execution.
What are critics saying about Deepfake?
The Reviews Hub
Reviewer: Scott Matthewman
"Jess and Morgs pack more narrative, comedy and political satire into the hour of dance than many a stage play could manage in twice the time. Technically, it’s a marvel, proving that integrating video technology on stage is so much more than projecting actors on large screens. But the tech only works because the creative force driving the whole piece has clarity and purpose, with something to say about politics, TV journalism, how they intertwine, and how nothing is as it seems in either world."
The Spy in the Stalls
Reviewer: Portia Yuran Li
"The production does not need to tell us that images can lie. Its more unsettling question is how an image comes to feel true in the first place. Its technology is not decoration; it is dramaturgy. By the end, the issue is no longer simply whether a politician is telling the truth, but where spectators are supposed to locate truth at all. Jess & Morgs turn the instability of the image into thrilling, meticulously choreographed theatre."
LondonTheatre1
"A production that will stay with you long after the final curtain and undoubtedly give you much to think about."
Reviewer: Fiona Gilbert
"Deepfake is a smorgasbord of entertainment blending dance, film, drama and chroma-screen technology in an ambitious crossover production with moments of remarkable creativity, brought to life by a hugely talented cast. At its best, the fusion of live performance and digital effects is genuinely exhilarating. There is a constantly shifting soundscape courtesy of Raffaela Pancucci, which embraces a huge range of musical styles and accompanies the projected video content, which features both live and prerecorded sections. There is also frequent movement of the chairs and other elements of the set whizzing around the stage. The result of all of this is that the production occasionally feels hectic, with so many elements vying simultaneously for the audience’s attention, and it is easy to lose sight of the fact that we are ultimately here for the dance itself. Fortunately, nothing detracts from the fluidity, grace and passion that both Muntanga and Basset-Graham bring to their performance, surrounded by the anonymous, energetic green-clad dancers adding another level to the activity on stage."
London Unattached
Reviewer: Teresa Guerreiro
"In order to work and grip its audience, though, Jess & Morgs’ Deepfake needs convincing performers, and in Rebecca Bassett-Graham and Kennedy Muntanga it has the best. Rebecca Bassett-Graham, now a member of Studio Wayne McGregor, is a remarkable contemporary dancer and a good stage actress, too, her implacable interviewer unmoved by the PM’s growing distress. Kennedy Muntanga is excellent as the increasingly frenzied politician; and the supporting cast of seven, all students of the Central School of Ballet, work and dance like true pros. Kudos, too, to the technical team, too numerous for individual mention, and to writer and dramaturg Jeff James, who drafted an uncommonly clear and cohesive narrative."
LiftedLeg
"The award-winning Jess and Morgs at last deliver their own show - a political yarn staged with clever, high-tech panache…"
Reviewer: Bruce Marriott
"Much of DEEPFAKE I would describe as physical theatre and there is a support cast of dancers all in green screen costumes (so they do not show in the live video), who manipulate the scenery but also quizzically illustrate the jumping mind games going on. The triumph of the show is the way the entire cast seamlessly work together to move physical items at the same time as live and recorded action is playing out around them - and it does get to the point where you do not know what is real and what is not."
The Guardian
"Ingenious interview with a PM who dances around every issue"
Reviewer: Sanjoy Roy
"Initially the tone is paranoid and conspiratorial, the dancers syncing to voiceovers that then start to glitch (a signature device of works by Crystal Pite and Jonathon Young). There are ambiguous, unvoiced duets which intimate, intriguingly, that interviewer and interviewee may not only be playing the same game of moves and countermoves, but might sometimes even be on the same side. Later, the piece starts shifting gears, swerving through farce, parody (there’s some delightful and very unexpected play with 19th-century ballet), absurdism, and ultimately a kind of comic bathos, equally unexpected."
Seeing Dance
Reviewer: Tianyi Li
"The production is less convincing when it explains an idea that the staging has already made perfectly clear. The central metaphor is strong enough that it rarely needs additional emphasis. Once we have seen an image constructed, distorted and reframed before our eyes, the relationship between media, truth and manipulation hardly needs spelling out again. At those moments, the text can feel heavier than the dance."
Production photograph by Foteini Christofilopoulou.
For more from this week’s openings, read our roundups of Flamenc Oh!! at the Peacock Theatre and Bull at the Park Theatre.
Deepfake played at Sadler’s Wells East on 1-3 October 2026.
