Station House Opera, Roadmetal, Sweetbread

Review in Issue 17-4 | Winter 2005

Roadmetal Sweetbread, which is re-filmed for each new site in which the piece is performed, creates a mesmeric play between live and filmed action; a complicated psychological game that tests the audience's powers of perception, memory and imagination. There are many companies nowadays using the device of having live performers and their screen alter-egos in the same space – but Station House Opera bring the weight of experience to the game, making work that requires the audience to really engage with what is being presented. Roadmetal Sweetbread is an exploration of male-female power games in which the two performers compete with each other (and with their own video images) for survival. Love and hate become synonymous as everyday irritations escalate into no-holds-barred warfare in what is a deeply, darkly humorous satire on relationships – enforcing the old maxim 'can't live with you, can't live without you'. The onstage screen presents a parallel universe which is sometimes almost identical to the live action, sometimes with minor discrepancies, sometimes radically differing; augmented by snatches of filmed action from offstage areas of the Theatre Workshop and the street outside. By the end of an hour, it becomes hard to say what was witnessed 'for real', what was experienced on screen, and what was imagined in this Theatre of Images – in all senses of that word.

Presenting Artists
Presenting Festival
Presenting Venue
Date Seen
  1. Aug 2005

This article in the magazine

Issue 17-4
p. 19