Author Archives: Dorothy Max Prior

About Dorothy Max Prior

Dorothy Max Prior is the editor of Total Theatre Magazine, and is also a performer, writer, dramaturg and choreographer/director working in theatre, dance, installation and outdoor arts. Much of her work is sited in public spaces or in venues other than regular theatres. She also writes essays and stories, some of which are published and some of which languish in bottom drawers – and she teaches drama, dance and creative non-fiction writing. www.dorothymaxprior.com

Karavan Ensemble: Somnambules and the 7 Deadly Sins

Doctor, doctor can you hear my heartbeat? It goes boom diddy boom diddy boom diddy boom – well goodness gracious me! Yael Karavan’s assumed character at the start of Somnambules has something of the classic Sophie Loren about her, with her shiny black hair, seductive eyes and wiggling walk. Her white-coated doctor friend, played by Tanya Khabarova, is heralded by a harpsichord riff – this, the gleaming bald head, and the sinister smile, give him/her an air of sci-fi menace. Let the experiment begin…

NEXT! Together they flirt and dance, and delve ever deeper into their shared psyche(s), a Jungian sea of unconscious fears and desires informed by archetype and icon. Binary divides and dichotomies abound. They morph and change, they are animus and anima, war and peace, good and evil, black and white – a pair of heavenly (or devilish) twins joined at the hip, at one point fighting to assert their own individuality, at another trying to merge into one. Manipulating and manipulated, swapping roles of puppet and puppet-master, creating an alchemical mix that bubbles and boils until eventually exploding, resulting in a plastic beach of distressed bubblewrap, bin liners and rain ponchos occupied by our two characters, who would seem to have regressed (or perhaps progressed) to a negative print of Tellytubby land, all high-pitched voices and silly party games, a king and queen in paper crowns.

NEXT! Rewind the clock. There are hands that become fluttering birds, a Faustian contract signed in blood, a baptism of fire, toy guns, robotic dances, a Pieta, a wild waltz, a tongue-in-cheek Isadora Duncan tribute. There are veils, and brides, and confetti. There are alchemical signs, tarot cards, skulls. There are mirrors, and shadows, and there is a moon. La Luna, la Luna – you shine so bright tonight.

The visual imagery of this piece is rich and deep. The physical performances are stunning: Tanya Khabarova and Yael Karavan have a shared history as members of multi-award winning Russian ensemble Derevo (of which Khabarova was a founder member, and in which both performed for many years), and the performances are of a quality rarely seen anywhere. A match made in heaven indeed. Or brokered with the devil, one or the other. The lighting design is sophisticated and beautiful, the sound an extraordinary mix of musical and sonic elements from many different places and times – from chirpy cuckoo clock to bombastic church bell; from nursery music-box tinkle to war zone bombardment.

It’s not a perfect show. There are moments that sag a little, the worst being a paean to ‘Destiny’ in which the words of a pre-recorded voice are mouthed by Yael Karavan as she sits cross-legged in front of a mirror. It comes early in the show, and it drags the energy down just as it should be lifting. Yes, the ‘destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice’ question is an interesting one, but I would have preferred it raised in some other way. There is a beautiful shadow-theatre sequence, but played off-centre rather than straight-on, so some of the audience see behind the screen and some don’t. I suppose as the shadow work rather cleverly references the Wayang Kulit puppet tradition, it is fine to see the behind-screen workings (as one would do in Bali), but it never the less seems a little odd.

I sometimes feel that the show would have benefited from an outside director or dramaturg, or at the very least an outside eye: the relationship between Khabarova and Karavan is so close, so intense, that the audience sometimes feel a little like voyeurs looking in on it, rather than being drawn fully into the game.

It should also be noted that the show has moved so far away from the original content and structure of the piece of the same name presented at Brighton Festival Fringe 2012 (and reviewed there by Total Theatre) that it has, in essence, become another work altogether.

Somnambules is a show that I’ve seen twice in its current form, and it is a show you need to see twice. I know that is a contentious thing to say, I know some of you will believe that theatre should work on one viewing, but there is so much to view that a second look is strongly advised. It is an extraordinary adventure, chock-full of mythical allusion and theatrical illusion. A very full, and totally full-on, spectator experience.

Rachel Mars: The Way You Tell Them

A fart joke in the first two minutes – that’s the way to do it! Happy days are here again! Where’s my wolf suit?

Performance artist, writer and erstwhile stand-up comedian Rachel Mars presents – ta-da! – a perfectly pitched show investigating joke-telling and laughter. Brace yourselves for a mad-cap rollercoaster ride that takes you from her Jewish grandfather’s reputation as a wag (although hearing his jokes recounted, Rachel struggles to understand why – it must be the way you tell ‘em) through to her own experiences on London’s comedy circuit doing stand-up in a wolf onesie, via Mighty Mouse and the Ha Ha Bonk Joke Book (which is indeed the best source for Knock Knock jokes). There is a also a running gag, or a comic story in instalments anyway, about a terrible occurrence at a Jewish funeral, which is fantastic, pulling together many typical components of humorous tales: death, cultural differences, losing control of situations and trying to keep a stiff upper lip, worries about social standing etc etc. I won’t spoil say anymore.

But it’s not all laughs, there are serious questions too. What do we find funny and why? Is there anything off-limit, anything we shouldn’t joke about? Paedophilia? Aids? Bomb blasts? Train crashes? Laughter is everywhere, in al human cultures: laughter as an anti-stress release, cruel laughter, laughter that unites, laughter that contradicts the serious notion that there is one agreed reality that we all share…

Rachel Mars has a great onstage persona, and brilliant comic timing. There’s a simple set, the stage furnished with a coffee table and chair and a standard lamp, with nice little scenographic touches that create a theatrical unity between the different onstage elements – red shoes, red notebook, red cushions. There are minimal but good choreographic touches, a wee bit of well-managed audience interaction, and some nice use of on-mic off-mic banter. It has all been gently guided and ably directed by award-winning theatre-maker Jamie Wood – hard to tell where his influence starts and ends as so much of the show is coming from Rachel’s personal experience, but there’s a shape and a structure and a rhythm to it all that gives it an edge over many one-person shows on the Fringe, so whatever the dynamic it’s a winning team. It’s a clever piece of work, because it has the rolling humour and vibrancy of a stand-up act, but it is so much more – a beautifully crafted and brilliantly performed solo theatre piece.

The Way You Tell Them was developed with support from the Basement Brighton and CPT London.

www.rachelmars.org

Ontroerend Goed: Fight Night

Roman, Charlotte, Sophie, David, Valentijn. Who will you vote for? Who will I vote for?

Voting here in this theatre set-up is anonymous, just as it is in the ballot box in the wider world. As we come into the auditorium we are issued with little electronic devices that will allow us to tap in our votes. We start with some straightforward questions: Are we male or female? Married, in a relationship, single? Which age group? Enter our contestants. All relatively young, all white. Three men (plus a male MC), two women. We have, at this stage, nothing to go on other than how they look (but let’s face it, we make snap judgements every day of our lives based on what we see/perceive/judge people to be, based on how they look).

So who do I choose? And how do I choose? Choose for what, I want to ask. To be friends with, to have sex with, to nurse me when I’m sick, to build shelves for me, to entertain me? I decide on Charlotte – the logic being that this is a theatre show, and I’ve seen her perform before and like her stage presence, so I want her to stay. At the very last moment I switch my vote to Roman, the renegade one, just for the hell of it. It’s a game, so let’s play games. Charlotte gets eliminated, and I feel sad – it’s my fault! And so it goes. This is democracy. You could argue that it is a theatre game, it doesn’t matter – but out there in the real world (whatever that might be), people vote for other people, including the people that will take crucial life-changing decisions on their behalf, for all sorts of strange and often trivial reasons. How many people vote for a candidate they really know and trust, and how many for someone they just like the look of? I like Valentijn’s cool mod looks (which he, oddly, describes as old-fashioned), and his gentle humour. David looks gormless, although he has a pleasant self-deprecating air. I don’t like Sophie’s sassiness, she’s too much of a winner, too much of a networker, always saying what people want to hear – and her sheer black tights and high-heels don’t feel right for a sunny afternoon.

For much of the time it’s all gentle fun. There are a few edgy moments, a few unsettling questions, and these I like. There’s a question about our response to offensive words (‘nigger, faggot, cunt, retard’) that offers one of the contestants the opportunity to adopt the legendary Lenny Bruce stance that saying the words out loud breaks their power. A question about whether audience members consider themselves to be racist, sexist, or violent brings forth the predictable response that most of this middle-aged middle-class group do not believe themselves to be any of the above. Liar, liar pants on fire! Anyone who knows anything knows that they are kidding themselves.

Director Alexander Devriendt sees the key element of the show to be the emphasis on democracy – the voice of the majority. That’s what he wants to explore, and there is thus no singling out of lone voices to express their views or to challenge the majority decision. There is, though, a moment when a sizeable minority is gathered up on stage – the voice of protest. There is also some clever play on the engineering of voting decisions – candidates at one point encouraged to form coalitions to eliminate other candidates.

All is done with the usual Ontroerend Goed flair and panache. Strong performances, simple but effective staging – and a thought-provoking premise: What does it feel like to be in the majority? What does it feel like to go against the grain? And who the hell needs consensus politics if there’s a revolution to be had?

Little Bulb: Squally Showers

Silver slash, naked mannequins, clear plastic chairs, a water cooler, a British Isles rug – welcome to the newsroom, the well-oiled machine of monumental broadcasts.

Little Bulb’s latest show is a kind of physical comedy sit-com with the comic twist that all the (black-legginged, bare-footed) characters express themselves not only through the sort of tit-for-tat dialogue familiar from a hundred-and-one sketch comedy shows, but also with cod expressive-dance moves. There is a more than a hint of classic Spymonkey and Peepolykus here – although I have to, in all honesty, say that those older, wiser companies have the clowning and physical comedy skills to pull off this sort of thing, and I’m not convinced Little Bulb have (or even want to have) – postmodern parody is the name of the game here. The young audience are delighted by it all, but I find it hard not to draw unfavourable comparisons.

Where Little Bulb win out is in their choice of soundtrack music for their eccentric dances (starting majestically with Jon and Vangelis ‘I’ll Find My Way Home’ and ending magnificently with the Cleo Laine cover of ‘Send in the Clowns’), and in the design/sceneography – the elements listed above are just the opening gambit, by the end of the show they’ve been augmented by bubble machines, big metal fans, rubber animal masks, Margaret Thatcher costumes, a unicorn head, and numerous glitter wigs and false moustaches. There are some fantastic visual tableau in the piece – breathtakingly funny, leading me to wish there was more of this and less of the sketch comedy palaver.

What’s it all about? It’s a farce about 1980s cultural obsessions. Yuppies, media jobs, alien abductions, electro-pop, leotards, OHPs, loads-of-money, networking, powerpointing, conflict analysis, fitness videos – it’s all here, its all parodied. Director-performer Alex Scott seems in his element, equally happy as a mullet-head or a unicorn. Claire Berresford is at least on the road to having the clowning skills needed to pull off this sub-Spymonkey scenario. And she can dance, so her parodies of dance come off. The others are personable and occasionally shine, but for my taste it is all too far down the sketch-comedy road of humour and not far enough down the truly skilled physical comedy/clown road. I realise, though, from the tumultuous reception they receive that I’m a bit out of kilter with the majority vote –and perhaps just not Little Bulb’s target audience.

Fire Exit / David Leddy: Long Live the Little Knife

Stage backdrop, floor and even the audience seating are covered with paint-splattered canvas. It’s like sitting in the middle of a Jackson Pollock painting. Although we are seated in a regular theatre space, I read in the script notes that the author (David Leddy) envisions it as set in an art gallery or disused warehouse. Both of which would be very appropriate to the subject matter, which we’ll get to later. A man and a woman are fidgeting round the space, nodding along to the kitsch, screechy Yma Sumac tunes on the soundtrack. A technician at his desk is placed upfront, in the performance space. And off we go, into a rip-roaring and hearty tale about a pair of con-artists, a husband and wife team called Jim and Liz who, when their stock goes up in smoke, switch from the fake vintage handbag business to art forgery. Although what exactly do we mean by a fake, a forgery? The deliberately distressed vintage handbag is a real bag, it isn’t fictional; the forged paintings are done by real artists using real paint.

But nothing is real about these two, we are lead to believe. ‘We tell lies for a living’ they say (and yes, we get the irony – that’s what actors do, you could argue). This fake existence, an existence living a lie, is played out dramaturgically by deft switches in accents and indeed roles as storyteller and character constantly swap skins – he plays her, she plays him, and they both play other people. Meanwhile, the technician plays author David Leddy, who allegedly heard this story verbatim – but plays him badly, you understand, because he’s not an actor. The innate fakeness of theatre is played with and challenged by the lighting and technical choices: lights are mostly household or builder/decorator lamps; the technician’s actions throughout are upfront and visible, not hidden. There’s also a slightly silly pretence of electrical faults causing interruptions in the action. The characters are aware of their own theatricality, so yes, it’s meta-theatre (and yes, Derrida does get mentioned somewhere along the way).

The game is that the boundaries between the fake and the real shift all the time. The goodies in the story turn out to be the baddies and vice versa. Who’s conning whom? It’s impossible to tell. Ultimately, it’s a redemption story: the crooks come good, and find salvation (bizarrely) in rescuing trafficked sex workers. They manage this by doing something they’ve never done before: using their real names and real passports to leave the country.

There are many narratives and threads of investigation that weave through and round the central story. The much-touted theme of castration in the play is played off against a theme of female infertility, which is linked in to a running thread about adoption and never knowing who you really are (do any of us?).

The design is great – I love the canvas, the hand-numbered ‘original artwork’ programmes, the lighting choices. I love the onstage technician. The dialogue is sharp as a butcher’s knife. I find the ‘theatre constantly referencing itself as theatre’ mode a wee bit passé and a little irritating – whilst of course understanding that in a show about the ‘real’ and the ‘fake’ going down that route is a temptation hard to resist. But for my part, having the mechanics of the theatrical process and the role swapping / accent swapping would have done the job without hammering it home in the text too.

It’s very well written and performed with pizzazz, a rumbustuous romp that works on many different levels. Despite the fact that castration, miscarriage, sex trafficking, and the sexual abuse of children all feature in the story, it’s ultimately a feel-good play, feeding us the notion that there is the potential for salvation in all of us, no matter how far we might have strayed down the wrong path.