Photo Will Sanders
‘We live in a world where people want for nothing, we are safe and secure, we are progressive, we believe in the new…’
For your pleasure, at their leisure, 1927 present a brave new world: a Chrome-Crome-Yellow world in which automation liberates us from mundane tasks, turning us all into middle managers; a world that engulfs and digests rebellious youth culture and regurgitates it as pop fodder; a world that purports to offer you anything you could possibly desire. Yet when you walk down the high street you realise that all the shops all look the same, sell the same stuff, and are now owned by the same multinational conglomerate. Say yes to progress!
So, what is it? Is it live animation? Is it visual performance? A new type of music theatre? That and more, so much more – this is hard-hitting political theatre wrapped up so prettily, served with such wryly humorous irony, that it is only afterwards that you really appreciate the take-no-prisoners satirical blow of the narrative. Slave or master? Who controls whom? Move with the times or be left behind!
Thus, the story of Robert Robertson (a boy ‘smelling of unwashed hair and mathematics’ and ‘always picked last at rounders’) who morphs from IT underling to – gasp! – supervisor. Along the way, he gets himself a Golem. In a new take on the centuries-old Golem myth, the lumbering man-of-clay, created to mindlessly serve his human master, fails to ‘sleep the dreamless sleep of clay’ and mutates, Pokemon style, into ever smaller and snazzier action-figure forms – taking the world around him with him in an orgy of mechanising, streamlining and globalisation. Granny no longer has knitting needles, but pulls a lumbering Knit-o-Matic machine around with her. The beautifully drawn (in both senses of the word) high street goes from a gloriously tatty jumble of butchers and bakers, bridal boutiques, and old-geezer pubs with dodgy singers, to a uniform row of Go! enterprises.
Those who know and love the company’s work will welcome the fact that The Golem, their third theatre show (with an additional opera collaboration along the way), is on a continuum – ever upward, its own wonderful self, but building on familiar territory. The form, first presented in the Total Theatre Award winning debut Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, and developed in The Animals and Children Took to the Streets, is intact: crisp and clever writing and direction by Suzanne Andrade; extraordinarily detailed graphics and animation from Paul Barritt; beautifully composed and played music by Lillian Henley; fantastic physical performance and assistant direction and design from Esme Appleton (here playing Robert’s sister Annie, narrator of this cautionary tale).
In each lovingly crafted and painstakingly developed new show in their repertoire, 1927 up the ante. The Golem sees the addition of a second musician-actor, Will Close. His brash big-beat drum-kit playing adds a whole new dimension to the soundscape, working beautifully with Lillian Henley’s piano. The creation of punk band Annie and the Underdogs as a central motif and metaphor for the show is a masterstroke. With a similar exhilarating shriek and thrash to the legendary X-Ray Spex the band belt out songs that would ‘ruin your Christmas’. By the end of the show they’ve become an identikit jumpsuit-clad New Wave synth outfit that look for all the world like a Poundland version of Kraftwerk. We are the robots!
This third show also sees Suzanne Andrade choosing to stay off-stage. The cast is augmented by Little Bulb’s highly talented actor-musician Shamira Turner, who plays nerdy anti-hero Robert, and the dark-haired nervously clipped-toned Rose Robinson who plays Robert’s would-be girlfriend Joy, doubling up deliciously as Granny Robertson. Both actors rise to the challenge of multiple characters and the meticulous interplay with the film, giving excellent performances and fitting very well into the 1927 world.
The visual joust between 2D and 3D is ever-tighter, with Barritt handing over the controls to production manager and operator Helen Mugridge, the whole show running live cue-to-cue. The film animation is magnificent: the screen work is enhanced by use of stop-frame animation – Golem 1 is an actual animated clay figure, a bit like Morph but bigger and with a willy. And I know I’ll have to see the show again just for the delight of revisiting all the wonderful visual details – street signs whizzing by, people popping up through windows and doorways, buzzing insects on-screen swatted by real-live actors. A favourite recurring moment sees a moustache on the portrait of the dearly departed Granddad Robertson turning into a caterpillar and crawling off when brushed with a duster. There is also some lovely live animation: in one clever scene the hapless Joy is discarded by Robert – who has been encouraged by the Golem to find himself a newer, younger model – leading to the Court-o-Matic speed-dating array of gorgeous girls presenting as humanette-style human heads atop of cardboard-cut frocks in a fast-moving fashion parade of desirability.
In what is a magnificent achievement there are some small flaws, mostly to do with pacing. An outside eye could perhaps have persuaded the director to lob 10 minutes or so off of the ‘Golem 2’ section, which slumps a little. It’s currently a brilliant 90-minute show that could be a near-perfect 70-minute show.
1927 – now almost a decade old – has grown over the years into a far larger family than that four-person team that won so many awards at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2007. The list of credits on The Golem includes associate animator Derek Andrade, sound designer Laurence Owen, dramaturg Ben Francombe, and producer Jo Crowley. And a word of praise here for costume designer Sarah Munroe (from The Insect Circus) who has done a sterling job.
Like its two predecessors, 1927’s The Golem will no doubt tour the world with enormous success. It is supremely satisfying to see an artist-led company creating such breathtakingly beautiful and accomplished multi-discipline ’total theatre’ work achieve the success they deserve. The future is here!