Review: L'Ecume de l'Air, Barbican Pit

Written for Culture Wars

There’s no doubt that Martin Schwietzke can juggle. In L’Ecume de l’Air (literally: The Foam of The Air) handfuls of white balls encircle his body as he weaves a continuum of motion both hypnotic and slumberous. These spiralling trails are sporadically interrupted as balls perch in the folds of his elbows or rest momentarily on his tilted temples. Strangely comforting and bewilderingly beautiful though it is, however, Schwietzke’s juggling somehow just isn’t enough.

Played underneath a translucent white sheet, pinched and pullied to resemble an ethereal big top or far-off mountain, Schwietzke’s actions feel more like practice than performance. While there is a laudable sense of human fallibility about his acceptance of dropped balls, it leaves very little at stake. The dense concentration required offers little room for our own involvement and his semi-improvised mode allows him to avoid mistakes by changing tack.

Opposite Michel Bismut’s solemn double-bass score, Schweitzke seems a man in isolation, whittling away the 10,000 hours supposedly required for mastery of a discipline. So evident is his skill that it becomes transparent and, accordingly, the theatre falls out of L’Ecume de l’Air. Rather, it is demonstration seen from a distance; empty virtuosity more suited to Blue Peter than the Barbican. Nothing really matters – it’s just juggling.

That said, everything changes with different tools. In the second-half, Schwietzke performs a delicate, measured dance with a balloon, a stick and a hoop. Herein is a relationship of opposition so absent in his juggling and, with it, images translate into metaphor and meaning. The angular solidity of Schwietzke’s body against the balloon’s weightless sphere creates a duet of contradiction, a struggle of control in which you can no longer tell which is leading the other. He seems to be juggling with the entire universe on all of our behalves, simultaneously at its centre and at its whim.

Slower, steadier and less spectacular, this act is all the more consuming. Together Schweitzke and his objects form a human-sized logic puzzle of interlocking rings; an expression of equilibrium that captures mankind’s curiosity and fascination with his environment.

In this tender balancing act that seems universally achievable, Schweitzke accomplishes far more than in the exercise of his own unique talents – he places his audience at the heart of his work in his stead, reaching beyond mere spectacle to reflect us both as individuals and as a species.

Review: Circus Klezmer, London International Mime Festival 09

Written for Culture Wars

It begins in the queue. Adrian Schvarzstein’s Village Idiot has dived into the ladies toilets and is now pulling women out one by one to find an audience member’s wife. Over the next ten minutes, the clown manhandles his audience like a safari-park chimpanzee disassembling a passing car. Hilarious from afar, but not as enjoyable up close, personal and so in your face it’s almost down your trousers.

In allowing Schvarzstein’s free play its own space and time to begin the show, it takes a while for Circus Klezmer to settle down into itself. When it does, however, it erupts into joy: the auditorium is in total rapture.

As a traditional Jewish wedding encroaches on the daily life of an unspecified Eastern European village, a string of mishaps occur. Rings are misplaced and domestic arguments explode, invitations are scattered and bride and groom seem to keep missing one another. The emphasis is not on narrative, rather on set routines threaded together by a single context.

As a result, the individual acts themselves become more expressive than impressive. Joan Català’s perilously supporting his wife is less a demonstration of muscle than of marital strength. As the bride, Teresa San Juan González winds herself in white sheets suggesting a girlish longing and innocent trepidation about forthcoming consummation.

Best of all is the glorious striptease of the Jewish mother, played to sheer perfection by Cristina Solé. From its humble, slumped-shoulders beginnings – peeling potatoes next to a bucket – Solé builds a masterful comic routine. Swinging herself around a wooden chair and swirling potato-peel into the audience, her body seems to move of its own exhibitionist accord. At times, her face contorts into warped, sneering come-hither looks; at others, she resembles a 13 year-old Mr Bean kicked in the balls.

However, it is in the combination of ramshackle cardboard set, inauspicious and piecemeal, with the triumphant bounce of the music that Circus Klezmer really lifts off. It is a celebration of people, of individual skills, of moments and of love over the material and meaningless. In the room, all is community and community is everything. We become unwitting collaborators, clowns and musicians, drawn together in a frenzy of Catalunian fiestas and Eastern European festivities.

The wedding may be pretend, but the atmosphere is not. Together we share something truly real, exchanging looks and laughter with strangers. Circus Klezmer is generosity over arrogant spectacle, showing that it’s not the height from which you might fall but the spirit with which you play.

Review: Seeking Oedipus, London International Mime Festival 09

Written for Culture Wars

Seeking Oedipus is the show to launch a thousand showers. Theatre of Silence’s physical retelling inflicts a revulsion that leaves your skin crawling and oleaginous. Liberated from the text and reliant on depiction over description, it writhes in visceral, visual metaphors and drips with disgust at the animal human.

The myth is here strongly structured around its three sexual encounters: Laius’ pederastic rape of Chryssipus, the conception of Oedipus between Laius and Jocasta, and, finally, the unwitting incest of Oedipus and his mother. At the height of each, there is a solar eclipse, as if, for a brief second, the natural order has fallen out of alignment. The passing shadow conjures in us the sharp, electric judder of guilt – like a glitch in the brain – in contrast to the fleeting ecstasy of the characters.

Guilty paralysis seems to carve cavernous hollows in each of the characters as they reflect upon their animalistic actions. Sex is predatory, full of teeth gnashing at necks like hyenas tearing at a carcass. Power becomes pathetic as Oedipus and Jocasta rule over and romp within a rubbish dump of discarded clothes. In the lurking presence of the bald, androgynous prophet Teiresius – perched vulture-like and invisible amidst the action – is the fatal inevitability of repercussions and conscience.

The success of Seeking Oedipus resides in the density of its images. It is a piece packed with possibilities, unafraid of individual interpretation, while simultaneously exacting a universal reaction in its audience. Played both as an abstract epic of almost operatic scale and as a singular cycle of tragic felonies, it holds a humid beauty both lofty and base. Aspasia Kralli’s ramped design suggests the barren mountains of Greece without binding the piece too firmly; her direction instils incredible clarity to the plot whilst revelling in its imagery to stir up intense feelings and dark thoughts.

Seeking Oedipus is a bold and brilliant piece of theatre, caught between traditions of Ancient Greece, Marcel Marceau and Pina Bausch. It delights the eyes and rouses the feelings in a way that everyday life is unable to do. Absolutely unforgettable.

Review: Captain Oates' Left Sock, Finborough Theatre

Written for Culture Wars

In 1912, on the return journey of the first British polar expedition, Captain Lawrence Oates sacrificed himself for his group, walking to his death to avert theirs. That his left leg was an inch shorter than his right – an injury sustained in the Boer War – adds imbalance to altruistic dignity. So it is that he becomes the perfect metaphor for comedy writer John Antrobius’ examination of early trials of group therapy amongst the insane.

Antrobius’ play examines a group of institutionalised voluntary inmates under the inactive observation of Dr. Parks (Tom Marshall). In amongst the ragbag collection of ticks and crocks are the youthfully antagonistic David (Richard Atwill), the coy masochist Juliet (Sally Tatum) and Carter (David Hinton), a suicidal forty-something bouncing between prim etiquette and blind inappropriateness.

As a line-up of the loopy, Green for Go’s production is an intriguing study of humanity, but lacks the frantic, zig-zagging urgency exhibited by the genre’s classics. Over the course of several sessions, Antrobius places more emphasis on revelation than revolution with the result that very little seems to change. Janie Booth’s Molly still feels wonderful, Pascale Burgess’ Dorothy remains silent and David exposes himself, before leading the group – Parks and his nurses included – to an isolated life of contented revels in a rural barn.

Director Russell Bolam’s response is to place us within the circle of chairs, sitting shoulder to shoulder with the characters. While this creates an appropriately awkward beginning, the segregation of audience and characters means it soon settles into a more conventional experience, albeit one in which focus is split between the reactions of individuals rather than the overall scene.

Thanks to strong, varied performances the result remains quite captivating. Marshall instils in Dr Parks an aloof curiosity that lends the part an endearing culpability; Atwill’s bulbously bullish David brings a sense of danger to proceedings and Hinton’s Carter is the very picture of anxious repression.

Best of all, however, is Lloyd Woolf as Fergy, a wannabe percussionist with a bodily stammer and a fear of loud noises. While Woolf can mine a silence for all its comic value, it is in Fergy’s paralysing indecision that Antrobius’ play finds its tragic edge. Woolf presents a man fighting against his nature, but oblivious to his constant drift away from mean time, constantly sprinting to keep up but falling further into the past. His naive happiness begs the question as to who Dr Parks’ institution is really helping – the patients, society or Dr Parks himself.

Review: Love in (3) Parts, Southwark Playhouse

Written for WhatsOnStage.com

Lost Dog describe Love in (3) Parts as “a (quite) romantic play.” While this is in part down to its slight and grounded subversion of happily ever after, it is also a world away from the high-blown epics of the romance genre. Eyes don’t meet across a crowded room, chests don’t heave with passion and hearts are set a-twitching rather than aflutter. Gone With The Wind this is not. The trouble is that Love in (3) Parts is ‘quite’ a lot of things, whilst never really amounting to much.

Writer John Shaw’s theory is that relationships inevitably go through three stages: “First, you love the quirks, then they drive you mad, but ultimately you miss them.” So it is between Rob and Claire (Rich W. Burton and Sally Kent). Both are lonely urbanites – he, an obsessive compulsive who eats meals for two with a mirror for company, and she, a workaholic giving constant updates to her dead mother. After a first date teeming with non sequiturs and nervous laughter, they stumble into and out of cohabitation and love, via an endless stream of pizzas, DVDS and wine.

Shaw suggests that with the increasing atomization and unification of a flat-pack flat society, we both need and fear human contact and that, even amidst the everyday, life somehow deserves a soundtrack – here provided by James Day, who ambles freely around the action, peppering it with Damien Rice-like acoustics.

However, while Love in (3) Parts contains some nice ideas, it is ultimately contained by the clumsy blatancy of its words. As a writer, Shaw suffers from compulsive obviousness disorder. Both the relationship itself and Rob’s condition are strings of cliché: lights switched five times, pencils lined up and clothes folded. As a couple, they are so snugly and smugly knit that it’s little wonder they have no social life outside of each other. Shaw presents a world of cutesy post-it notes and children’s books that will enflame even the slightest trace of cynicism within.

And it really is a shame, because everything else around it works well. Burton and Kent find recognizable simplicity and gentle humour in badly-drawn characters. Director Dan Mallaghan maintains sense through a cut-up chronology with a strong sense of location, aided by the low-budget slickness of Kath Singh’s design and Alan Lane’s lighting, and James Dey’s sweetly folksy music coats everything in a layer of (quite) romanticism.

Lost Dog suggest themselves to be a company of promising theatricality burdened by a crippling reliance on clunky text and, as such, the nauseatingly nice, (quite) romantic Love In (3) Parts is just not quite right.

Head Above The Parapet

Just popping in - at a ridiculous time in the morning - to point you in this direction. I know it's precious little to be getting on with, but in some ways it feels quite big. At the moment, for me, its less a case of burning the candle at both ends; more an inferno of molten wax. That said, expect a deluge of reviews (um, four) from the London Fringe and the London International Mime Festival over the next few days. And, with a little bit of self-discipline, some thoughts on last weekend's Devoted & Disgruntled 4.

Review: Medea, Humble Theatre

Written for What'sOnStage.com

At first glance, Jodi de Souza’s transposition of Euripides’ ancient heroes to pop culture royalty is a promising one. In many ways, the madness of our own Queen Britney evokes both pity and fear as she swings from summit to trough completely beyond her control. The relentless advance of celebrity is, according to de Souza, the tragic harmartia of our times from which Heat magazine delivers us Aristotelian catharsis.

However, de Souza’s woefully transparent adaptation turns itself inside out in search of projected parallels rather than dramatic action. Here, the press are the new Gods, spokespeople the new servants and politicians the new monarchs. While its targets are incisive, Humble Theatre’s “shockingly modern paraphrase” has all the credible authenticity of Jordan’s tits, teeth and tan.

Former Miss World Medea (Claire Bond), has been betrayed by the father of her unborn twins, Jason Bradbury (Matt Gardner), a footballing superstar moving to America as his playing career winds down. By way of revenge, Medea gifts his new bride-to-be Glauce, the daughter of the American Secretary of State, a dressed laced with quicklime, before undergoing an abortion.

Though not helped by the cramped playing space, Humble’s modest production emerges utterly overburdened by the epic nature of Euripides’ tragedy. For the most part, it feels like an extended monologue of moral wrangling and whimpering indecision, occasionally interrupted by the plot. In the mouths of airheads, the poetic nobility of Euripides’ text morphs into the clunkiness of a Bond script, utterly lacking in subtext or politics. Such lines as “Your honeymoon will be short, and anything but sweet” deserve, and duly receive, a Blofeld-like cackle.

Add to this leading performances so generic in anger and madness – all flailing arms and tilted heads – from Bond and Gardner and the result is a piece utterly devoid of pathos, empathy and ethical ambiguity. Bond’s Medea might as well spend the hour agonisingly torn between Daddy and chips.

Thanks heavens, then, for the isolation allotted to the Messenger’s speech, through which Claire Jared finds some semblance of dramatic conflict. Her pronouncement of Glauce’s death is beautifully paced and deliciously detailed, combining horror and incredulity with a touching nostalgia. It is a rare moment of treasure in the midst of a tiresome and testing evening.

Happy Pig's Ear

My parents welcomed in 2009 from a train carriage somewhere between Vauxhall and Clapham Junction. Having attempted to watch the fireworks at Waterloo, they got themselves caught up in the stampede, lost the majority of their party and, at about quarter to midnight, gave up and headed home. Along with three other solitary, self-conscious passengers, they caught the hazy glow of colourful explosions through scratched glass windows as, over the train’s intercom, the driver’s monotone crackle heralded the pips of midnight.

There is something wonderful about the anti-climactic nature of New Year’s Eve. As a celebration it is defined by inevitable failure in the face of unwarranted expectation. It is a night possessed of an arbitrary significance, whereby a single second is plucked from infinity and selected for greatness, marked out as the crossing of a threshold, as if a single click shifts time into an entirely new category. Yet, we insist on building a ritual around it. One that must defy its own triviality and elevate the evening into something altogether extraordinary, remarkable and, indeed, historical. The pressure is for extravaganza and excitement. It must nod to tradition whilst simultaneously separating itself from that tradition through scale and ambition. Each year must be louder, brighter and more drunken than the last.

It is, however, the glorious collapse of the spectacular into the mundane that makes New Year’s Eve special for me. You see it in the girl slumped unconscious on a sofa by half ten and in the gentle post-midnight trudge from Parliament Square to Victoria station. You see it in the fog of firework smoke that creeps over South London and in the discarded, crumpled party hats that litter the pavements. It’s in the desperate scouring for someone unknown to kiss at midnight and in the clogged phone networks, in the lonely man sat watching it all on television and in the faltering cheers that always fall short of the countdown itself. Then, over the next three weeks, you see it all over again as resolutions slowly fade into routines of old or shatter in a moment of frustrated weakness and life resumes as normal.

New Year’s Eve is the prime example of failure by trying too hard and, in this, theatre and performance could learn a few things from it.

Since Certain Fragments became obligatory reading for theatre students, failure has become an increasingly important and popular element of experimental performance. Tim Etchells’ writing, in tandem with the performances of Forced Entertainment, has spawned a performance culture that embraces accident and mishap onstage. Accompanying this came an aesthetic of the makeshift and the homemade, whereby fiction is undermined by its literal falling apart.

Over time, however, the two strands have become somewhat detached and the latter has taken over. An increasing cynicism towards the ‘magic of theatre’ has led to the tendency to destroy any possibility of fiction without creating or, at least, nodding towards it’s existence in the first instance. Clunky puppets are manhandled and movements are clumsily bumbled, ill-fitting objects signify anything and everything, text is written with a messy haphazardness and delivered with a scornful disregard. Brook has been bastardized by a generation of practitioners equally focussed on the reality of theatre, but lacking his imagination. The Empty Space has been left well and truly gutted.

The trouble is that such work aims directly for failure. It is a theatre of sabotage that makes a beeline for the broken, stripping theatre of possibility and standing triumphantly in the ashes. Where the performance mode is knowingly half-arsed and deliberately botched, the only commitment is to a lack of commitment, which, of course, leaves everything ramshackle and a little bit shit. In seeking this failed aesthetic, this type of performance becomes failsafe. Its shortcomings are, in fact, not failures at all, but successes, since in failing it achieves the very thing it aims for.

True failure can be hugely enjoyable to watch. Phelim McDermot, artistic-director of Improbable, once told a workshop attended by Present Attempt: “People love to see people fuck it up.” However, the aesthetic of failure is of little worth without an ambition of which to fall short. Theatre and performance can only fail in the face of the impossible: by asking too much of itself, by trying too hard, by lacking the apparatus and expertise, by having too much at stake. It must aim for the utmost of grandeur and eloquence. It must try to strike the deepest of emotions into the hardest of hearts. It must reach for the stars with a stepladder. Or remerge the continents with sellotape and superglue. It must always make the best of a bad situation with the material available. In spite of itself, the theatre of failure must always be a Finale and a Spectacular.

I want a theatre that parties like its 1999, only to find that the champagne has gone flat and the mini-cheddars have run out.

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While I’m on the subject of failure and shitness, Andy Field’s review of Lapland UK is well worth a diversion. As is news about Forced Entertainment’s next project, Void Story, being made for this year’s Spill Festival.