Author Archives: Lisa Wolfe

About Lisa Wolfe

Lisa Wolfe is a freelance theatre producer and project manager of contemporary small-scale work. Companies and people she has supported include: A&E Comedy, Three Score Dance, Pocket Epics, Jennifer Irons,Tim Crouch, Liz Aggiss, Sue MacLaine, Spymonkey and many more. Lisa was Marketing Manager at Brighton Dome and Festival (1989-2001) and has also worked for South East Dance, Chichester Festival Theatre and Company of Angels. She is Marketing Manager for Carousel, learning-disability arts company.

Pieter De Buysser and Hans Op de Beeck: Book Burning

Telling a story through parallel voices is a familiar theatrical device – witness Michael Pinchbeck, Chris Goode and others. Here, though, we have a story told by a theoretical cat (Schrödinger’s, no less), the writer/actor Pieter De Buysser, and a character called Sebastian who Pieter tells us is fictional.

The main story belongs to Sebastian. He is a campaigner, a big thinker, a tracker of DNA codes and a father to teenage Tilda. His torso emits light, which attracts moths. Tilda owns the cat.

Pay attention at the back!

Sebastian has discovered all sorts of world-affecting and incriminating information about international organisations that are now closing in on him in a threatening manner. Tilda responds to her father’s situation by taking objects from their house and burying them in the garden.

Complex ideas around democracy, economics, communication, utopias and freedom are explored through Sebastian’s lengthy writings to Pieter. There is a hint towards Damanhur (an Italian eco and spiritual society built inside a mountain) with the introduction of a character called Nobody who falls in love with Tilda. The story rounds up with Tilda burning her father’s book – on which is plotted her future life trajectory through her DNA code. It included the date of her death, but it didn’t include this highly emotive and often political act, of burning books.

All this is beautifully played out by Pieter, a calm and engaging performer with an expressive face. A giant trunk (made by artist Hans Op de Beeck) opens out ingeniously to represent the landscape and homesteads of Sebastian and Tilda. All is grey and delicately lit, like a Giorgio Morandi still-life painting.

At ninety minutes, Book Burning is a bombardment of ideas and interweaving storylines; it requires and repays full attention. Delivered in English with playful ‘Dutchness’, it may try a bit too hard to pack everything in, and who can judge the truth – might not Wikileaks’ information be as biased as the CIA’s? But it is good to see theatre that tackles historical and contemporary issues in such an interesting and evocative way.

Yet again The Basement shows its metal in programming strong European work at Festival time.

Banana Bag & Bodice: Beowulf – A Thousand Years of Baggage

The initial framing device of Beowulf – A Thousand Years of Baggage is strong: three characters with a different take are our guides to the Anglo-Saxon epic poem. Each has their own intonation and style of speech; I particularly like the literary academic who speaks in that odd way that Air Cabin Crew do, emphasising certain words for no apparent reason.

The band behind them is quirky looking and has an impressive range of instruments, and is joined by more players who march through the packed Spiegeltent in the late evening light.

The audience has a role as the King’s court at his Mead Hall. It is jolly and well played and fun.

And then…

Beowulf is essentially a poem about battles and monsters and revenge. It has further levels of complexity and must have been a powerful and evocative listen for its original community, rich in nuance, danger and magic. This production however side-steps any attempt at depth or at gaining an emotional connection to the characters. Instead it opts for the broad-brush, audience friendly, music-led, story-light version.

It takes as its major theme the maternalistic vs paternalistic society and sticks doggedly to it. Narrative is sidelined. Beowulf and his adversary Grendel (Jeremy Back) are dudes, Grendel’s mother (Jessica Jelliffe) is a revengeful witch, and King Hrothgar (Rick Burkhardt) seems to disappear.

The opening witty exchanges become rare as it dissolves into a motley musical, with songs in different styles – the blues number, the rockin’ number, the female wailing number. The performers are all strong and can deliver, but it is formulaic and has limited theatrical flourishes – namely thumb wrestling, water in containers, and a giant arm (now that was funny).

I’m all for a good time in the theatre, but need something more than a dramatically simplistic view of such a potentially rich text. A company like Little Bulb could, I think, have given it more depth and variety. The setting was good for it, and the audience cheered a lot, but it was certainly more of a late night fringe show than a main slot international festival offer.

www.bananabagandbodice.org

Clerke and Joy: Volcano

The length of the space is full of dark brown earth. There are little illuminated cities and towns across the landscape. Stage left stands a pilot. ‘We know he is a pilot because of his uniform’ is a repeated refrain in this story of eruptions and explosions, environmental and emotional. From the muddy mounds emerge Clerke and Joy, followed by volcanologist Dr Mike Cassidy, the three of them taking us on a journey through the formation and effects of some of the world’s key volcanoes.

The performance combines wild, naïve dancing, sharp text, experiments and scientific fact. There is filmed imagery as a backdrop and an eclectic mixture of songs old and modern.

Clerke and Joy combine these disparate elements whilst maintaining a strong through-line and friendly conversational tone. The pilot (Adrian Spring) is the pivot around which the story revolves. He has been grounded by Eyjafjallajökull, the Icelandic volcano whose ash-cloud caused enormous air-traffic control issues and blighted the lives of thousands in 2010. A sad, solitary figure, bearing with grace the sorrow of those affected whilst dealing with his own life troubles.

Volcanoes are given personalities: Mount Pelée is a sad comedian with bad Icelandic jokes, Yellowstone is represented by a balloon blowing up competition that ends in the inevitable pop, and Vesuvius is a begrudging Italian (‘It’s all Pompeii this, Pompeii that…’). The ash-cloud itself is talcum powder, a pungent and familiar smell, linking childhood with old age and adding to the general chaos of the set.

As a world premiere, and a one-off performance, it’s a cracking start and very enjoyable. Clerke and Joy’s intention is to view big global events through the lens of the everyday. Volcano succeeds in this. It evokes disasters with feeling but not sentimentally; it is funny and moving and the performers have an appealing and sisterly warmth.

The show ends with the Northern Lights and some witty film credits. It is a hard balance to strike to not make light of disasters that have affected millions of lives, but Clerke and Joy’s lo-fi show manages to make us think and enjoy ourselves.

www.clerkeandjoy.com

Hunt & Darton / Future Ruin / The Honest Crowd: Table Manners

Table Manners dished up three courses ‘exploring the rituals of food and dining that enshrine our social hierarchies and hang-ups’.

First comes the buffet, Delia – We’ve Been Thinking, presented in lavish colour by Hunt & Darton. Seating is placed around the fully laden and largely inaccessible buffet display. We are given name tags so that the hosts (performing as Jenny and Holly) can call on us for comments, assign us tasks, and comment on our appearance or life history. It is a playful riff on the hosting of parties, interaction between strangers and the role of the guest – should we really crawl under the table to get at the Twiglets? Participants are asked to read out conversations, or recipes, or shout for more Babysham. There is a wine and cheese tasting event and forced laughing and some slightly inappropriate dancing on the tables, delivered with deadpan and strict authority.

Such a format depends on the engagement of the audience, and my group was a fairly reluctant bunch, less eager to respond and join in than Hunt & Darton’s regular followers. What should have been an ‘amuse-bouche’ felt like a bit an ordeal for the performers and for the audience – whether they wanted less of it, or more.

The second course, Future Ruins’ Exterminating Angel, is similarly hostage to particular circumstances, but this time because the majority of the content is improvised. The audience is now totally passive. We are viewers of a dinner party without end (inspired by the Buñuel film of the title) as five friends chat, play, fight and test each other over a meal where nothing is eaten and nothing is drunk. It ebbs and flows, as conversation so often does, at times banal and then searingly personal. There are interruptions that are probably prompts to move the story along – a very loud scream for example. A key episode deals with confessions, each in turn detailing something they have done of which they are ashamed. It was painful to witness. Director/deviser Jack McNamara has shaped the piece well. The cast is extremely accomplished and naturalistic but I didn’t fully believe their relationship as friends, nor did I particularly like any of the characters, which reduced the emotional pull. Despite being the most fully formed and theatrically testing of the trio, it felt like a long hour and never quite reached full boiling point. Another time it might be startling and unforgettable; it certainly has that potential. But that is the issue with improvisation. It so often appears more challenging, rewarding or enjoyable for the practitioners than the audience.

Finally comes a fine dining experience, Glasshouse, courtesy of The Honest Crowd. Another large table, around which the thirty or so of us sit, behind a glass of red wine and a slice of French stick on a plate. Five performers are sat amongst us, and a deadpan waitress serves them each in turn. A conversation starts and crosses the table. It is a fun one; they are chummy and convivial. Gradually the control slips, sentences get mangled, the food gets absurd. They are fed grass, and chillies, washing-up sponges and raw eggs and more wine which overspills. Throughout it they maintain a semblance of balance, even when blindfolded and sprayed with water. A blackout and flashing lights provides cover for the letting rip of polystyrene balls. Glasshouse is a fun metaphor on the way friends can behave when the wine grabs hold and people no longer notice what they are eating or talking about. The young cast is rehearsed to perfection in a slick and engaging piece, and if at first the audience was kept at arms length, it soon became part of the action. Glasshouse was not deep or life-changing theatre, but it was a charming, messy pudding of a show with which to end Table Manners.

Produced by The Basement for Brighton Festival, the event was well linked in terms of content and the audience was led through the three spaces of a dining experience with care and attention. Whilst the companies were self-contained, with their own technical teams, the production values throughout were high, with crisp tablecloths, sparkling glasses and fresh ingredients. No easy task for three two-hour performances each day. Less successful perhaps was the adjustment the audience had to make moving from participation, to passive voyeur, to communal experience. The rhythm of it didn’t quite work for me, but maybe I am a greedy consumer… I did crawl under the table to get at the Twiglets after all.

www.huntanddartoncafe.com / www.futureruins.co.uk

Voetvolk: It’s going to get worse and worse and worse, my friend

Rhetoric has the power to persuade and a good speech takes its listeners on a journey, often leading them to a place of rapture – and no more so than with evangelist preachers like the American televangelist Jimmy Swaggart.

In a fifty-minute dance piece, Lisbeth Gruwez embodies this disarming process. She first appears backlit, standing on a square of grey carpet in luminous outline, a neat figure in grey trousers, white shirt and gleaming patent leather shoes. Her gaze is bold, a slight smile now and then. She is like a male flamenco dancer, head slightly down, back straight. Her gestures are minimal and conduct the broken text and sonic sounds, fragments of Swaggart’s preaching, that seem to come from behind the audience. She is master of the text and our guide to it.

There is a beautiful, slow pace to this opening section. It teases. It repeats almost to the point of ‘OK, enough’ and then it changes tack just at the right moment. Swaggart’s sentences build and the movements get fuller, richer and more expansive. Just when we think it is going to break into really strong vocals, it cuts out and Lisbeth falls to the floor, where she stays. Just that little bit too long for comfort. Teasing us again.

Now, with socks and pants pulled up like those of a matador, the piece shifts into another gear and we get the pay off. Shuddering, filled with light, the dancer and the speech become dynamic. It’s a perfect marriage of form and content; the figure bouncing higher and higher as if driven by an inner ecstasy, and Swaggart urging it on with his breathless booming, encouraging a trance-like state. The sound comes from somewhere else; it is omnipresent, surrounding us and Lisbeth. The puppet master has become the puppet. She beams with joy and is lifted. Blackout.

Lisbeth’s training in classical ballet is evident in her poise and control. Her subsequent career with some of the leading contemporary dance companies in Europe shines through the choreography: sharp, swooping and adventurous – it takes a really disciplined body and mind to pull this off without loss of breath and with such assurance. The accompanying sound and cut-up speech (by musician and composer Maarten Van Cauwenberghe) is similarly exquisite.

In contrast with the show’s title, it doesn’t get much better and better than this, my friend.

Total Theatre