Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg / The Barbican: Antigone

Suited in a contemporary new translation by Anne Carson that is as stark, cutting, and brutal as the modern world this Antigone lives in, Ivo van Hove’s production at the Edinburgh International Festival descends with the full weight of looming darkness of Sophocles’s classic.

A bold circle of light that beams through the center of Jan Versweyveld’s set stands as a lone symbol of light in a world where we are all on our way to darkness. Video projection by Tal Yarden carries us through cities and barren landscapes that keep us grounded in the sparse physical setting. This production frames the story squarely around Kreon’s tragic determination and inevitable downfall. Antigone, one of Oedipus’s daughters, refuses to follow the law of the land as Kreon, the ruler of Thebes, orders that her brother Polyneikes will not receive a burial because of his actions in a recent civil war. Antigone refuses, instead calling on the irrevocable laws of nature to demand the justice of honoring her brother in his proper rites.

After a heated confrontation between Antigone and Kreon, he orders her execution. From this moment on, Antigone marches toward her death with ease and acceptance, virtually without complaint. This stands against Kreon’s demise, which makes death a far preferable alternative. His fate includes every horror that could be dealt to a man, and is made worse only by the fact that he does not die.

This production, produced by the Barbican and Les Theatres de la Ville, weaves Sophocles’s classic story simply and brutally. There is a sense of remorselessness in the grey office setting that matches Kreon’s unwillingness to change the course of his commands. The pleasure he takes in his complete authority mirrors the sense of doom that seems to pour out from governments daily across the globe where rulers choose their pride and power instead of governing earnestly for a common good.

Antigone, on a contemporary landscape, lands somewhere between a challenge and a warning: Will we learn before it is too late? Or is this a whistle in the breeze notifying us that we are past the point of no return to our inevitable demise?

The performances are strong through the ensemble. The chorus acts wisely as a collection of concerned citizens monitoring the moral compass of the central action. Actors shift easily between central roles and chorus parts, holding us inside a fluid universe where everyone changes identity, even the symbolic Juliette Binoche as Antigone (who becomes a messenger), but not Kreon, played powerfully by Patrick O’Kane. He remains trapped inside his own moral incapacity.

Particularly exceptional performances are turned in by Finbar Lynch in a biting scene as Tiresias, and Samuel Edward-Cook as Haimon going toe-to-toe with Kreon as he argues for the virtue of one’s ability to alter their perspective.

Haimon throws thick philosophical passages at Kreon in their confrontation, challenging notions of power and education, as he lays out simple truths that are at once undeniable yet elusive. ‘There’s nothing shameful in being a person able to learn,’ Haimon pleads. We all know, sadly, that if Kreon does learn, it will certainly be too late. We hope the same isn’t true for us.

The Pinocchio Theatre in Lodz: The Metaphysical Caravan

I heard the drive from Poland to Scotland was quite eventful, and the group on the morning of their first performance were tired and stressed, and the equipment had suffered from rain damage. After waiting until they’d settled I managed to see two of the three pieces they were presenting at the Fringe before heading for the World Festival of Puppetry in France.

The caravan seats seven, leaving a small playing space at the end. On the side, behind a black gauze curtain is the technical box and the electric guitar player, who accompanied both pieces I saw.

The first took place behind a clear Perspex screen, on a tabletop stage. A puppet of an old lady in a wheelchair, her hands strangely oversized as they are the real hands of the two puppeteers, struggles with the lamp switch before lifting a series of little panels from the playboard revealing a variety of props; knitting and then peeling an apple before producing a roller and painting on the Perspex screen, allowing little grainy projections, memories of her life, to appear. This simple piece is touching and keeps surprising the audience, the music creating a meditative atmosphere.

The second piece presents a (real-life) man sitting at a table whose surface is revealed to be heavy grey clay. He lays the table for dinner with clay plates, cups, jug, and wooden cutlery before moulding all the various clay items into body parts, creating a figure with a face. He cuts holes into the table allowing a light below to stream through and turns the figure into a vertical plane where a projection of a small man is trapped. Finally a face is projected onto a clay screen. It’s his face and he moulds a clay face into the projection creating a hyperrealistic self portrait.

The Metaphysical Caravan a great example of the kind of controlled micro-theatre that puppetry excels at. Their combination of atmospheric live music, projection, puppetry, and performance allows for a great variety of performance art pieces.

Complicite: The Encounter

Complicite have built a reputation as master visual raconteurs. Their body of work has almost come to define the term physical theatre as they have etched a unique style that fuses physicality with a deconstructed stagecraft, supporting gripping narratives. In their latest piece The Encounter they not only uphold this reputation but break new theatrical territory. With the magical use of binaural technology Simon McBurney brings us sensory storytelling like nothing I’ve ever seen or heard before. It’s not that binaural technology hasn’t been used in theatre up to now, David Rosenberg and Glen Neath have been playing with it for a while and use it for both of their shows Ring and Fiction. The difference here is that we pair this audio wonderland with a visual marvel that is both breathtaking and beguiling.

Although the clever technology is impressive, what is truly marvellous about this piece is the narrative. McBurney brings us a passionate account of a true story that necessitates something unique for its retelling. Inspired by the book Amazon Beaming by Petru Popescu, this is a wildly intriguing story about the journey of National Geographic photographer Loren McIntyre into the Amazon, where he is stranded and becomes reliant on the hospitality of the Mayoruna tribe in order to survive.

McBurney frames this narrative with an exposition about his personal relationship with his children, and the ways in which their lives are documented, with masses of photographs in contrast to previous generations. Mapping the development of their existence with a constant stream of evidence and proof that they do exist, watching their brains develop as they begin to understand this themselves, amongst the notion that others too exist. This touching insight begins to probe at the overriding themes of the story. McIntyre wants to document an undocumented people. The Mayoruna have never had extended contact with the outside world, they are an unknown and their understanding of existence, communication, and time is unique to themselves, breaking down McIntyre’s very grasp on consciousness and being.

McBurney uses a plethora of innovative audio technology to bring this story to life. The entire audience wears headphones throughout, a voice tool enables McBurney’s voice to switch between his own as the narrator and the voice of McIntyre, a deep drawling American accent that switches us into first-person narrative. As we watch McBurney become McIntyre he uses sound loop pedals to record rustlings of the jungle made with VHS tape and his own body to create layers of forest sound percussion. The effect is startling, binaural technology replicates audio in the way that the human ear receives it, making us feel that sounds are coming from all around us. Of course, in true Complicite style, McBurney has already explained that to us at the beginning, we are as aware of the trickery as we are of the simple ways that the sounds are being made, and yet, this feels like some kind of magic.

As McIntyre travels deeper into the jungle with the tribe, his grasp on what he thinks of as reality and time begins to warp. Whisperings of the jungle, death, and rituals surround him and he establishes a relationship with the tribe’s chief in which they begin to communicate in telepathy. The entire back wall of the expansive stage is covered in rubber-looking asymmetrical blocks that produce a warped grid, and digital projection onto this creates a hypnotising visual effect. The dark, slithering jungle is transposed via this back wall into a rippling, pulsing mass of green as McBurney trudges on stage in a visualisation of McIntyre’s gradual journey into a liminal reality.

This is a theatrical feat. It is clear that an amazing amount of time, passion, research, and manpower has gone into its creation. There are perhaps some visual elements still to be found as at times I find the stage almost too big for this one-man show, but there is no doubt that the huge effort it has taken to realise this piece has been well worth it. I am moved, amazed, enthralled and engaged throughout. McBurney has dreamed a theatrical vision for a story that grasps at the very fundamentals of existence: with a theme this big it is a wonder to see how Complicite have realised a production that can handle it. The chief of the Mayoruna asks McIntyre at one point why they would want any contact with ‘white man’, as ‘they will come with their planes, their guns and alcohol,’ and I leave feeling shaken by the shoulders, questioning all that we think we know and what our understanding of consciousness has lead us to in the ‘developed’ world. McIntyre shouts ‘I have never been part of nature!’ and the driving question of how we have engaged / disengaged with our existence is posed with deafening strength. This show is powerful, provocative and beguiling. A truly transformative masterpiece that demonstrates just how moving and relevant theatre can be.

Studio Matejka: Awkward Happiness

Awkward Happiness is a contemporary dance-theatre piece performed by an attractive young cast of four, featuring singing, acting, contemporary dancing, live musical accompaniment, and video projection. As we enter a lithe young lady is sat on a table, swinging her legs, swigging wine and throwing sly smiles in our direction. As the show begins she tells us that ‘People think I’m just a blonde girl, a person who’s laughing all the time,’ and that ‘A happy person is a sick person.’ Partly inspired by Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the show seems mainly to express the difficulties of finding happiness in relationships. Two couples engage in flirtation, desire, resistance, and recrimination, represented through a movement vocabulary of writhing, lifting and jumping, alongside dramatic performances. There are also some very well-made, rather abstract video projections, and throughout the production values are very high.

I found it most effective in its more theatrical sections such as a sequence where one couple argue on a bench whilst the woman is mixing flour in a bowl. This is both humorous and engaging, and the flour is gradually spilt on the floor, providing an interesting aesthetic effect when they later roll-around in it. However, the show’s overall approach is abstract and suggestive rather than narrative, and doesn’t clearly comment on the issues explored.

There are an array of contemporary performance tropes on display, including speaking through mics, getting changed in the corner, lots of underwear, a scene where the ladies fall over and the men only just catch them, some rolling around in the flour and some unusual live instrumentation, in this case a zither.

At one point the super-toned and quite strikingly striking blond woman stands in her underwear grating an apple and tells us that ‘To be gorgeous is a result of hard work.’ This came as surprising and welcome acknowledgement of what many people must surely have been thinking about. She begins manically rubbing the juice of the apple into her skin, whilst she continues to tell of the sacrifices needed, such as having ‘no fast food, only slow food.’ Had this point been made earlier and laced with a stronger undercurrent of humour, it could have counterbalanced my nagging sense of cynicism about the production’s sheen of existentialist chic.

This is a well made, quality production performed by a clearly talented cast, but often felt generalised and formulaic in its approach to an interesting and complex subject.

AYMDAAGAAOMSRIARCF56MATL: A Young Man Dressed as a Gorilla…

The full title of the show, A Young Man Dressed as a Gorilla Dressed as an Old Man Sits Rocking in a Rocking Chair for Fifty-Six Minutes and then Leaves… 7, is an entirely accurate and literal description of this performance, which was fascinating, hypnotic, and frustrating all at once. Now in its seventh year, the concept seems to have something of a cult following, attracting a highly interactive and enthusiastic audience who become the performance by providing the entertainment as the gorilla continues to rock and rock. I have to admit that I couldn’t quite stomach the experience to the end, though was lucky to escape without the jeers that many other spectators faced from an audience intent on keeping everyone in the room!

What started out for me as humorous, ridiculous and intriguing, with subtle audience comments and occasional interactions where the braver members approached the stage to try to interact with the gorilla, quickly became a platform for those who liked attention and their angry detractors, and this as much as the content made my frustration build. Some comments were highly amusing, including the man who suddenly announced twelve minutes in, ‘Ah, I get it now!’ and another dressed as a superhero who repeatedly gently straightened the gorilla’s cap, all to rapturous applause.

In terms of a being a study of crowd mentality the concept is interesting, although of course we have to take into account that this is a fringe crowd, which judging by many of the production t-shirts on display, seemed to consist of a lot of young performers, and those who seemed to know what to expect as they had bought along props and sound effects (a banana was a touch of simple genius which received a warm response!). In all, this was definitely (and literally, as it is only performed once) a one-off performance and I can very much see why its unique nature appeals, but after thirteen days at the Fringe, when I close my eyes I can still see that gorilla rocking and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing!

Total Theatre