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Saturday, September 30, 2006
I think I possibly might have seen one of the most beautiful pieces of theatre I’ll ever be witness to. An exploration of time, terror, memories,… It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. I wasn’t watching theatre, it was like watching living art. I seriously felt as if I had been transported into a different reality; a surreal reality. The soundscape was beautiful, there was never a single moment of silence in the entire show. And no one ever spoke, it was all white noise, recordings played forwards and backwards. Instruments. Human voices being manipulated into unrecognizable sounds. Until that final moment when the male protagonist comes back on stage and calls out ‘Charlotte?’ Blackout. Absolutely stunning. And the light. OH!!!!!!!!!!!! A box was hanging from centre stage and the audience never once noticed it until it appeared in its scene. Pure brilliance. And the balcony. First you think it’s one plane that’s a metre of so deep. Then you think maybe there’re two levels and it’s a few metres deep. And more and more things are thrown in, until you realize there’s at least 5 different levels and places up there, and there’re bare tiny trees and branches standing there from the start of the show you never noticed that came out at the exact moments.
From the start, when we are gathered at a cold empty carpark and we are led up the path and we see a woman in a white gown in the distance, holding out a birdcage with light comin from within it, all the way to the pier where something is floating down the water and four women dressed in black Victorian gowns hold out a skirt that is soaked and drop it in terror, to out final destination in the old abandoned meat market, where we stand outside, waiting as our usher winds up the heavy metal gate and lowers it back down and locks it when we’re seated in our chairs, and the location is thick in smoke, and it is cold and chilly. Regardless of the fact that I am aware that I am watching a performance and nothing is real, I am still spooked out by the eerier atmosphere.
A woman is sprawled out on a broken looking box in the middle of the space, there is a balcony on our right where a man is working on his things, and eventually a woman walks in from the left, all is still dark, and you can barely see her through the thick smoke. She has a bright bulb on her chest, and her head is drenched. As she walks, drops of water drip incessantly from her chin.
How about the scene where the male protagonist chains up his wife, sets mousetraps on the floor, then unchains her and makes her dance the waltz with him. Except, they skirt round the first trap, she steps over the second, and he tilts her backwards and you witness the terror on her face as her head is inches away from the trap. Then he forces her towards the third trap, and she resists him, and breaks away from him. He takes her by force again, and again, she breaks free. Finally he overpowers her, makes her pirouette, and throws her on the ground and she barely brushes past the trap.
And the final scene, where the female protagonist has her head in the box, the four female figures clad in black with protruding spinal bones crown around her, making a cacophony, like bloodthirsty crows, and they draw nearer to her and grab her head and raise it, and there she is, gasping for dear life, for her head was plunged into water that was in the box. And as she gasps for breath, you see her breath mist up in the coldness. Now that’s dedication I say.
The way the performers have such wonderfully skillful control over their bodies and voice. I had to spend half a minute trying to figure out if I was listening to a recorded sound, or if it was live sound I heard from the performers. And the way the grey men has such control over their muscles. It was fascinating to watch them walk stealthily, like hunters, and experience an involuntary spasm in their shoulder. The action was so carefully executed and precise that no other part of the body moved. It was as if the shoulder was entirely disconnected from the rest of the body. And it wasn’t just the shoulder, other parts of the body went through the same body isolation. It was simply divine to watch.
This is Theatre, I thought. I want to do something like that, something that will reach out to my audience and spark off something in the depths of their being and make them hold their breath. That is Theatre.
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