Wired Theatre, Park Play

Review in Issue 18-3 | Autumn 2006

We enter on enclosed scented garden in a public park. I'm unsure and curious about who is audience and who is actor in this site-specific open-air performance. A girl rides a chopper bike across the grass. An elderly blind lady sits alone on a bench. A woman meditates on a blanket. Real birdsong is all about. Glorious. Gradually, scenarios build up all around. We are free to move from one to another, listening in, being a spectator, occasionally a participant ourselves. A woman carries Binky the dog. Stevie the chopper bike girl asks about him. He's rather 'stiff'. The ageing woman explains that he is a real dog, it's his real skin, it's just that the rest of him has had ‘treatment'. A girl carrying a violin is anxious. She wants money to get to London. A pent up middle-aged woman has a loud conversation on her mobile phone. Echo, the meditating do-gooder, gives her a card – she offers therapies. The pent-up woman unwillingly voices her bad nightmare, of endless defecation in public! A married couple make the most of their companionship. The husband has had a stroke. His speech is slurred and he can't walk properly. Strange, sad and ridiculous scenes and interactions build. Conversations and confrontations grow up and dissipate. A touching, natural, fantastic performance traversing the very real to the hyper-real. I found Park Play thoroughly enjoyable, engaging and curiously moving.

Presenting Artists
Presenting Festival
Site

St Anne's Well Gardens

Date Seen
  1. May 2006

This article in the magazine

Issue 18-3
p. 25