Dreamthinkspeak have developed a unique and identifiable theatrical idiom which, at its best, alchemises site, space, installation and interaction into meaning and experiences that cast new light on old classics. Before I Sleep (2010) recast The Cherry Orchard into a poignantly iconic Cooperative department store in an unloved corner of Brighton, a hugely resonant marriage of place and theme that deepened and enriched our connection to the play’s exploration of transience and the limitations of modernity. In The Beginning Was The End draws its inspiration from a Da Vinci Drawing, ‘A Cloud Burst of Material Possessions’ and, as implied by the title, echoes of Revelations, attempting to animate their ideas through the Neoclassical architecture of Somerset House and the cool stone corridors of Kings College basement.
Da Vinci’s subject seems to be materialism and apocalypse, and the show expands on such ideas through a number of strands. A series of superannuated engineering labs (in the basement of Kings College) become haunting installations, overpopulated with circuit boards, mountains of filing, and ghostly dead or dying green CRT screens, a sort of lament to the vanity and futility of technology and learning. A futuristic corporation inhabits the upper storeys (though it feels strangely like an 80s vision of the future) seeming to offer a flawed antidote to the obsolescence below. Recurrent images of flying and falling, of rising waters, formulae and alphabets flit past. There are glimpses of epic flood, in the rain that echoes throughout, and Babel in the many language of the corporation’s sales reps (a witty touch that nevertheless undermines any real interaction we might have with many of the performers). At moments we are giants peering into miniature worlds. At others a giant face seems to laugh at our progress.
Cumulatively, this is sometimes intriguing and often provocative but there’s a sense of dramatic shape missing in this production. It’s tempting to link this to the process of starting from a single image and a set of themes rather than drawing from a dramatic arc with its built in mechanism of transformation and change. There’s a sequence near the middle of the show which, partly by virtue of being close up, live and intimate feels compelling and climactic but which unfortunately leaves what follows (at a remove via video or other barriers) feeling underwhelming. There’s a danger too that the production’s philosophy – broadly speaking, that myths of progress, especially commercial ones, are unsatisfying and not to be trusted – can feel somewhat pat. I’ve seen my share of contemporary theatre decrying the dissatisfying, dehumanising effect of corporate employment and such statements only over-simplify both sides of the argument. I need my art to add to the debate, not simply rehearse it. If there is something more nuanced being explored here, it’s obscured by the familiarity of this story. This sense is unhelpfully magnified by the grandiosity of the discourses the production references.
Judged against the brilliance of dreamthinkspeak’s recent back catalogue this show feels disappointing, even though it does have much of beauty.