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

How It Ended Productions: You Obviously Know What I’m Talking About

Meet Winfield Scott-Boring. He lives all alone and never goes out. His little flat is piled high with old copies of Sea Angler magazine (he doesn’t go sea angling, he just likes reading the magazines), and he works in his pyjamas, ‘fixing the unfixable’. At night he goes to bed with a Californian self-help cassette tape (old technology is important in Winfield’s life) telling him soothingly that ‘you are in control’, and we soon learn that he’s in love with the lady across the way who he sees watering the flowers in her window-box.

The oddly-titled You Obviously Know What I’m Talking About was a surprise. Something about the title of the piece suggested a hip, experimental, possibly multimedia production by a young company, and only that last epithet – production by a young company – applies. What we have presented here is an endearingly old-fashioned piece of ensemble comic theatre with song, reminding me of companies that were the mainstay of the devised theatre world of a couple of decades back (Théâtre Sans Frontières, Brouhaha, Theatre Alibi, et al). The show is supported by Escalator East to Edinburgh, and although it is not really breaking any new ground, it is certainly a competently produced and well performed piece of theatre.

There is a lovely set – all wonky door-frames, asymmetrical photo-frames and little lights sparkly in the miniature apartment blocks seen through the window – designed by James Lewis and built by Tin Shed Scenery. There are feisty performances by our team of four actors (two men, two women), who in their multi-role, all-singing, all-dancing gung-ho enthusiasm remind me somewhat of Little Bulb. There’s some ironic use of popular song (‘Come Fly With Me’, ‘Stormy Weather’). There’s a very lovely rocking-horse that acts as the conduit to Winfield’s freedom, and is one of many objects used very cleverly in the production. There is also a moment in which we watch a kettle boil in real time – perhaps a stage first!

Although I very much appreciate all the small visual, physical and verbal details that make up this wacky world in which Winfield has trapped himself, I am not greatly taken with the story itself – although it does all resolve itself in a very satisfying way. However, as a young company they get the benefit of the doubt – it’s a jolly good hour’s worth: well-executed, entertaining and gently funny.

www.howitendedproductions.com

Dancing Brick: Captain Ko and the Planet of Rice

Behold Captain Jane Ko and her trusty robot sidekick Stark, going where no woman has gone before, into the land that time forgot. There are fossils and relics and remembrances of things past. There are new discoveries that seem worryingly familiar, forgotten quests, and retrod paths.

Captain Ko is a triptych of short pieces by the ever-resourceful Lecoq trained Dancing Brick company that references and plays upon every single ‘philosophical’ sci-fi film you could care to mention, from Tarkovsky’s Solaristo Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey; Ridley Scott’s Alien to Duncan Jones’Moon.

Part one is cheery and clownish and has a kind of Star Trek meets Forbidden Planet vibe, our trusty space adventurers clad in Pierre Cardin-inspired Swinging 60s versions of spacewear – duck-egg blue suits and white booties. Using film very nicely as a backdrop – samples of sci-fi classics, countdowns, moonwalk footage – we see our two lost wanderers moving in endless circles as the millennia tick by.

In part two, there’s a sudden switch in mood. Stark disappears, Captain Ko takes off her helmet and jacket, dons a beige cardigan and glasses, and she’s now an old lady. There follows an excruciating fifteen minutes or more as she silently repeats a series of mimed actions from everyday life – reaching to get a cup from the cupboard, pouring a drink, forgetting what she’s doing, starting again… and so it goes on. And on. I learn a day later from someone who managed to get a programme (there were few to be had!) that the whole work was developed from a research process into the effects of Alzheimer’s. But without this knowledge there is no way to understand this scene, nor to appreciate the ‘lost in space’ scenes as a metaphor for dementia. I would also say that there are surely ways to present the notion of mindless, boring repetition without being boringly repetitious. Many audience members had their heads in their hands at this point.

The third part is much stronger – here we are presented with the story of Sergei Krikalev, who holds the honour of being the man who has spent the longest time in space. He was dubbed the last citizen of the USSR, spending ten months aboard the Mir space station from May 1991 to March 1992 as the Soviet Union fell apart, meaning that, although he was of course monitored, no one was too interested in him – there were bigger concerns back home. Thomas Eccleshare drops his Stark persona to become Sergei (and again, without the programme notes I really didn’t understand this at the time) and the other half of Dancing Brick, Valentina Ceschi, keeps him under surveillance with a very nice use of live feed video that cleverly gives us the impression of Sergei in zero gravity, drifting aimlessly you could say. I’m very taken with this narrative of the cosmonaut abandoned whilst life on earth goes off in all sorts of new directions – and of course being left drifting in space whilst the world moves on is a pretty good metaphor for the terrors of old age, so now I’m aware of this over-arching Alzheimer’s theme things make more sense than they did whilst watching the show.

Ultimately, I felt that although there were very many marvellous moments, what I was watching was a series of provocations – ideas towards a show rather than the show itself. Also to say that if, in a piece of predominantly physical and visual theatre, we need programme notes to understand the content of the show, then something has gone wrong.

There is work to be done, but hopefully there is a good show in here waiting to emerge eyes blinking into the daylight.

www.dancingbrick.net

neTTheatre: Puppet. Book of Splendour

‘You shouldn’t expect a story’ says someone at some point in Puppet. Book of Splendour. Well no, of course not. NeTTheatre’s latest work to make it to the Edinburgh Fringe is not afraid to tackle big subjects – the Kabbalistic tradition of Jewish mysticism, the struggle between existence and oblivion, the all-encompassing breadth of Judeo-Christian culture, history, philosophy and religion – presenting them with director Paweł Passini’s usual flair and daring. What we get instead of ‘a story’ is a multiplicity of stories, ideas and images about life and death, creation and dissipation, ein sof (no end) and the finite, weaving around and through each other and us in an exhausting but exhilarating hour-and-a-half of sensory onslaught.

A Rabbi quotes from an ancient text in the Torah, an artist in a black beret (reminiscent of Tony Hancock in The Rebel, it must be said) waves his brush in the air in an anguished state, before collapsing exhausted on a bed. Is he God? Is he the architect of the world? A naked couple – Adam and Eve, we presume – struggle into a shared white shirt, keen to cover their shame. A strange black beast with a body of shiny leatherette prowls across the stage. From the mouth of babes: a child takes a book (probably a sacred book, perhaps the Torah) from a shelf, reads from it in a voice full of awe and wonder (‘he understands nothing, but he loves it’), then later gets on a tricycle to ride around the performance space in endless circles. The words Mercy and Justice and Kingdom and Paradise are broadcast from an upstage screen, and a host of white bubble-wigged angels pop out of a cabinet to serenade us. English, Russian, Polish – a babble of languages envelop us. Books and words, and words and books. And the Word was made Flesh…

NeTTheatre’s Turandot won a Total Theatre Award in 2011, establishing the company on the Fringe as makers of complex and multi-layered visual, physical, visceral theatre in which music plays an important part. Puppet. A Book of Splendour similarly uses an extraordinary mix of live music and heightened visual imagery from high and low culture – and everything in-between – to create a glorious onstage stew of sounds and moving pictures. The Jewish myth of the Golem is a key theme in the show, and the notion of the ‘puppetesque’ is explored repeatedly throughout as dolls, mannequins, masks and animated clothing are used to create a series of effigies that appear and disappear (like the clay Golem of legend) – brought to life from inanimate matter by the human hand, a triumph of will and faith, only to then dissolve back into materiality.

Kantor – always acknowledged as an influence on the company’s work – is more directly referenced in this show, both in the stated desire to investigate and explore Kantor’s theory of a Theatre of Death (‘and its unexpected neighbour, childhood’) and in much of the physicality – there’s a nice overcoats-and-hats knees-as-feet shuffle dance at one point that is a homage to a scene in The Dead Class. The physical work – solo, duet, trio or ensemble – is of a very high standard throughout, and a word of praise here for the extraordinarily talented child-actor who held his own in this talented ensemble of eleven actors and singers.

The stage area is rather too small for this large ensemble, and is additionally crowded out with towers, screens, beds, cabinets, tricycles, chests, mannequins and whatever else. I am sure that it is all intended to be a glorious mess, but I would have thought a mess that needs some space to expand, rather than exploding out from the audience’s feet with nowhere to go. It is very difficult to read the surtitles from the front rows – and the words are obviously an important element in this production. It’s also extremely hot in the Summerhall main space, and the 90 minutes of the show drags a little. I am happy to concede that this is a ‘Fringe’ problem rather than something intrinsically wrong with the show – performing/watching a longer-than-average and complex show late-night in a crowded, unsuitable space is not ideal.

What the answer is for shows of this quality and complexity and how they can fit into the Fringe format is obviously a question for future Edinburgh presentations by neTTheatre and other enterprising and adventurous companies of this calibre. Regardless, this is a show that has stayed with me – one that I would dearly like to see again as I feel I have only scratched the surface of experience and understanding.

www.nettheatre.pl

Akhe: Mr Carmen

The cards are drawn, and what will happen will happen. As we enter the space – a big old church with a grand high ceiling, shadows cast on rough brick walls – two men, dressed in great frock-coats and tall hats, are sat upstage behind painted lecterns, turning over playing cards and throwing them to the ground. The lecterns are hinged, and the effect is of one of those ‘head, bodies, legs’ games. The lights dim and the lecterns move forward, downstage to the very front of the stage space, opened out to become a kind of painted wall on which our two performers perch drinks and candles – candles which burn through strings, which cause things to fall… And so we are off!

In Mr Carmen, Russian ‘theatre of engineering’ supremos Akhe are up to their usual tricks. There is smoke, flame even. There are flat puppets whizzing round a wire square surrounding the space, which creates a kind of surreal boxing ring in which our two combatants in love slog it out. There are pulleys and winches, cardboard and string, water and wine, paint and sand.

This version of (or perhaps we should say homage to) Carmen goes back to the original novella by Prosper Mérimée – Carmen’s husband is written out of Bizet’s famous ‘opera comique’. It is the rivalry between men that is at the forefront of this exploration, which exploits the tragicomic aspects of the story. Carmen herself is nowhere to be seen, an elusive absence referenced with dancing dolls, roses, lipsticks, and a red chalked heart on a board. Her name (and her lover, Jose’s name) are writ large – in glitter, in foam, in fire; as wood-block prints and in blood-red paint on crumpled brown paper.

Everywhere in this word-free piece there are visual, physical and musical allusions to the Carmen story: cigars are rolled on thighs, frockcoats opened to reveal matador-style red stockings. Andalusian trumpets sound, and a guitar is strummed with Duende passion. There is a cigarette light dance duet, a whirling all-male flamenco (beautifully absurd as danced by the burly men of Akhe), and a knife fight using a whole medley of different weapons.

As always in Akhe shows, puppetry, paper engineering and automata feature heavily, with two-dimensional and three-dimensional figures made in their own distinctive style, a kind of mulch of Russian folkloric and Dada. It goes without saying that the performances are pitch-perfect, and it all adds up to a wonderful show – Akhe at their eccentric best.

www.akhe.ru

Derevo: Mephisto Waltz

‘You forget that all the feelings of the world, the rains, the sounds, the cities, the birds, the people, and everything… is you,’ says Derevo’s announcement of their inspirational new ensemble work, Mephisto Waltz. Know that we are intrinsically part of everything, and that everything – good or bad – is part of us, is the message. Light and dark, life and death, sanity and madness, summer and winter, Heaven and Hell. You can’t have one without the other.

The show is a kind of history of the whole world and all it contains, with loose reference to Goethe’s Faust, and in particular the less-well-known Faust – Part II, with its story of Faust’s time in the wilderness, and the birth of Euphorion the savage bird-man who (like Icarus) flies too high and is burnt to death. Human folly has a light shone upon it, and the excesses of capitalism, religion, war, and the plundering of the natural environment are all commented upon wordlessly. Sound has a big part to play (in particular, Franz Liszt’s Mephisto Waltzes, and Holst’s The Planets suite).

Many and various are the extraordinary images that move across the stage, conjuring up illusion and allusion: here, a Nosferatu in a long black gown, with a curved nose and an enormous shadow double looming over him; there, a stage-full of whirling dervishes and waltzing women. Now a bower of flowers, and now a shower of pretty butterflies that turns into an ominous flutter of suicidal moths hitting the light (I’ve never seen butterflies as menacing creatures until this moment). A carrot-nosed snowman melts before our eyes, and a flock of egg-heads in nest-twig collars invade the stage. There’s a living scarecrow clanking cans at the birds around him, and a savage soldier tearing apart a globe to reveal its juicy (watermelon) centre – chewing on a cigar, he walks downstage muttering in a crazed no-man’s-language, to stand just inches from us, grinning insanely. (Both of these figures, and many others, are played by Derevo’s director and guiding light, Anton Adasinsky.)

Now he’s a blind scythe-bearer in a pink skirt hacking at the air, and now an old man lying on a couch, layer after layer of plastic masks stripped from his face until he remains ‘maskless’: exposed, raw, open to the realities of the world he has created.

Described by the company as ‘a gospel of dance, a personal journey and a declaration of love’, Mephisto Waltz is Derevo returning to what they do best: a strong five-person ensemble with breathtaking physical presence. It is at times impenetrable, but it is always fascinating – with moments of dark humour to throw some light into the Faustian darkness.