The Memory Progressive
Phantom Limbs
fortyfivedownstairs
February 24 – 27, 2010

Organically beautiful. That was the phrase that eventually morphed out of my brain as I attempted to grapple with the right collection of adjectives in the English language to describe The Memory Progressive.

I was slightly apprehensive as I settled into the piece, by emerging dance company Phantom Limbs. More familiar with theatre than with dance performance, I was uncertain about devoting myself to watching an art form I didn’t feel I could really appreciate for a whole hour. I was wrong.

I came away feeling I had witnessed a live portrayal of a sort of kaleidoscope of black-clad limbs and bodies that moved together, at times in staccato, and at other times in fluid motion. The performers seemed to form a sort of mechanical machine with cogs and moving parts that circled around each other, weaving in and out, sometimes copying, sometimes mirroring, nearly always moving in two pairs coming toward a central focus point, perhaps orbiting around each other, and then scaling back out again.

The piece wasn’t entirely focused on dance and the body itself. Central to the work were themes of memory loss, the role of technology in mental reconstruction, and the phenomenon of telepathy. Although, in a very ‘posty’ performance – post-apocoloyptic and post-dramatic – the audience could add any number of meanings.

Pivotal points of the narrative occurred in a sequence at the start that was repeated later in the piece. Here the four performers shouted and pouted. It appeared that there was a death, although no one knew who was killed or why or how or by who, and none could remember what had happened, despite the attempts to provoke memory through sensory images.

Music and lighting (James P Brown) were crucial to the piece, adding to the tone of the moving limbs; at times fluid and gentle, at other times mechanic and jarring. They revoked the narrative by aiding sensory layers of meaning to the search for memory and identity, forming a nice juxtaposition to the slow erasure of sensors that the performers faced. Blankly vacant polaroid portraits, eye masks, earphones and balaclavas wiped out their identity and rendered them monotonous, faceless bodies.

The piece could have been slightly shorter – I did on occasion tune out to the monotony of music and movement. Although on later reflection my reaction was probably telling and added to the overall sense that the repetition of mechanics, and even of life, can leave the watcher or the participant numb and unable to engage or maintain concentration.

The highlight of the performance occurred between the two male performers (James Welsby and Rennie McDougall), their bodies like swan’s necks circling around each other as they both tried to break out of a web while simultaneously being drawn back into it by the other and by their own desire to remain together.

All together it was beautiful to watch, at times stylised and precise, at other times organic and liquid. As mentioned, my lack of knowledge of choreographic styles makes me a bit of a novice when it comes to describing these works, but my performance-art savvy friends tell me the ‘chory’ was fabulous — all thanks to the talented work of Amy MacPherson and James Welsby.

The Memory Progressive was performed by Phantom Limbs founders Amy Macpherson and James Welsby and new members Lily Paskas, and Rennie McDougall. Composed and animated by James P Brown and choreographed by Amy MacPherson and James Welsby.

The Sleeping Beauty
The Australian Ballet, The Arts Centre
Matinee, September 19, 2009

When it was performed on the 2nd of November, 1921, The Sleeping Beauty – then playing under the title The Sleeping Princess – was understood to be, at least according to contemporary critiques and the ever-indispensible program guide, leaden down by a ‘slim, disjointed narrative’, with ‘too much dance material’.

That was 88 years ago – and it’s a shame that The Australian Ballet’s refreshing of one of ballet’s most famous works serves to only prove that maybe, just maybe, we haven’t really come that far.

For those unfamiliar with The Sleeping Beauty’s famous story, it revolves around a Princess, Aurora, who, as a newborn is made herald of spring by the season’s fairy. Her natural enemy, the winter fairy, attempts to have the young Aurora killed – and as a consequence of the resulting fracas is doomed to fall asleep on the day of her 16th birthday, thus submitting the world to an infinite, icy winter.

Only the kiss of her true love will awaken her from slumber, and one hundred years later he arrives, dispelling winter and returning the seasons to their natural order.

The story itself is the quintessential fairy tale – forces of darkness battle forces of evil, alliances are clear-cut and the journey and its characters have foreseeable and rewarding endings.

The key concern of this rendition of The Sleeping Beauty is that its principal focus is the beauty at which it’s executed rather than the execution itself.

Nevertheless, the piece amply showcases the high technical ability of the company as it rises to the formidable challenge of performing a pure Classic Ballet with fine-tuned execution – from the Soloists to the Corps de ballet.

Miwako Kubota as Aurora is technically excellent – performing the daunting Rose Adagio was convincing balance and precision. Unfortunately, her interpretation of the role lacks real expression and sincerity; ultimately the characterization suffers the same fate as the entire piece – dazzling, spectacular but tainted with a distinct artificiality.

The same could be said for Prince Florimund: while the role is confidently performed by Remi Wortmeyer, the relationship between his character and Aurora too often felt hollow, and thus never truly translated to the audience. Perhaps as a Soloist and Senior Artist it was a lack of experience that was its genesis – more of it required to develop a true and convincing portrayal of the two famous characters.

Sadly, as principal protaganists, the fairies are largely unrecognizable. Traditionally simple colour contrasts between these characters are now turned homogenous, pallid – a slip that risks damaging the ballet’s narrative arc and almost certainly affects the audience’s enjoyment of the re-staging.

Regardless of this, Reiko Hombo is a clear standout, bringing to her performance the required energy and charisma need for the Canari Fairy. However, her compatriot in Stephanie Williams – the pre-eminent Lilac Fairy – is uncomfortable, tending to lose the focus required for the character.

On sides both good and evil, Lana Jones is perfect as a convincingly cold, harsh Carabosse, and Tzu-Chao Chau excels amongst peers with excellent line, elevation and virtuosity in his performance as Prince Florestan.

Ultimately, this is The Sleeping Beauty – so the ingredients are all there. The sets are grandiose and beautiful, though still clean and uncomplicated. The lighting is also used to great effect, simultaneously highlighting the beauty of the ballerina’s bodies and portraying the story’s moods and seasons.

But with a languid third act, a story that focuses less on the rewards of dramatic structure and more on its presupposed impact, this re-staging of The Sleeping Beauty is unrewarding; a beautiful variation feels without purpose, the energy with which dancers carry themselves seems oddly benign, and the audience is left overwhelmed by the ballet’s length rather than as a dazzling spectacle.

Servant of the Revolution

Servant of the Revolution
Mechanics Institute, Brunswick
8pm Tues to Sat 21–25 July;  28 July–1 August; 6pm Sun 26 July

Pre-performance ritual unfolds as the audience enters to three people applying stage makeup, seated around a wooden table in a state of concentration and focus. They are neutral wearing theatre blacks, legs crossed under the table, feet shoeless, occasionally conversing between themselves. Ropes hang the Marx family picture upstage and centre. Red blankets conceal other hangings in the dusty, attic setting. A piano recording is playing in the background; it fades out.

There is a voiceover and the performers tilt their heads with mild interest. It references Karl Marx’ death holding “a hand of Tussy’s, and a hand of mine”. It is unclear as to the owner of the ephemeral voice; my guess is Frederick Engels, Marx’ political collaborator. The blankets are tossed aside and the set up of the stage begins. “Chair”, “bowl”, “stairs coming through”. The performers verbally acknowledge each object. “Two minutes” – They change into periodic costumes of grey and red. “One minute” – The last of the props are in place. “Thirty seconds” – Lenchen (Donovan) is left onstage, cutting a strong figure.

During this scene, a huge cardboard picture of Marx’ face has been taped to the floor. Interestingly enough, Karl Marx is not characterized in this play and does not appear. Through the picture he takes on a cold, removed observer role, a presence that is ignored by the characters as they traipse across him.

Engels stumbles ungracefully on stage heralding the beginning of a scene that would last the duration of the play. It was running to real time; sixty minutes passed in the theatre with approximately the same time passing in the script. This concept is inherently interesting and the scene could have been stimulating if there had been some development, to character or plot, in that hour.

Lenchen has seen her son Freddy (son of Marx) for the first time since birth. She relates her regret, sadness and internal struggle of giving up her son to Engels. He is a committed listener who then attempts to console her; gently reminding her of the ‘servant of the revolution’ role she has taken. Tussy makes a brief appearance to confide in Lenchen of her romance that is disapproved by Marx paralleling Lenchen and Marx’ forbidden romance. Tussy exits and the conversation ensues heatedly between Engels and Lenchen.

The play is brought to a close with the entrance of Jenny, Marx’ wife, and Engels words “Courage comrade, courage”. No resolution has been reached, no character arc has occurred and the audience is left exactly as they begun. One socialist joke the wiser perhaps.

The performers are definitely to be commended; Donovan is the highlight as the deeply caring, maternal, yet restrained and hardened Lenchen, and is complemented by Tiernan’s affectionate Engels. Pagone’s presence was brief as both Tussy and Jenny, but striking nonetheless. The well-considered set design is by Rafaella McDonald.

The play is the conception of writer-producer Anitra Nelson and brought to the stage by actor and director Brenda Addie. Donovan, Tiernan and Pagone come together for the first time. The three have collectively secured roles on the Australian small screen in shows including City Homicide, Sea Patrol, The Strip and Canal Road. All have long histories on stage and are strong contributors to Melbourne’s theatre scene.

Anitra Nelson, a former member of the Australian Communist Party before it dis-banded in 1991, remains a women’s liberationist. She is an expert on Marx studying him extensively including his ill health and carbuncles. The Servant of the Revolution presents the hypothesis that Marx fathered an illegitimate child to Lenchen (or Helene Dumuth).

Do not be deceived by the experimental beginning, this is highly conventional theatre. The script is dry and more of a research paper, although there were redeeming moments of wit and humour. The Servant of the Revolution has its merits in excellent actors and stage design.

The Servant of the Revolution is at the Mechanics Institute, Brunswick until the 1st August.

Writer/Producer – Anitra Nelson
Director – Brenda Addie
Sound Designer – Ted Kazan
Set Designer – Rafaella McDonald
Lighting Designer – Scott Allan
Performers – Julianne Donovan, Ray Tiernan, Clara Pagone

Gabrielle Nankivell

I left my shoes on warm concrete and stood in the rain
Dancehouse
July 8 – 12, 2009

As we emerge from splintered darkness, an antiquated suitcase slides across the stage, its origin unknown, its purpose mere mystery. Soon it will be revealed as a survival kit for life – a tidy, purpose-built container that encompasses salient lessons in advance. As our lightened vessel examines its contents we hear a tauntingly happy voice against electro-pop elevator music – this is I left my shoes on warm concrete and stood in the rain: a performance playful and tragic, light and dark, but always human.

Superbly choreographed and performed by Gabrielle Nankivell, I left my shoes on warm concrete and stood in the rain is an intensely physical ode to the frailties and strength of humanities’ psychology. Nankivell shows maturity in her clarity of movement as she whisks the audience through the thin films of an inner psyche, effortlessly contrasting aggressive, explosive physicality with quieter, articulate movements. Her skill is in her expression; she expounds madness with her challenging balance of weight and gravity, before seguing into minimalist expressions that are welcomingly more concerned with conveying truth than flamboyance.

Nankivell successfully purports that matter and makeup in reeling tragedy is simultaneously miraculous and terrifying. Luke Smiles’ soundscape, a testament to this, deals competently with the mundane, the epic and the tragic, without ever feeling overpowering. Much of I left my shoes on warm concrete and stood on the rain‘s tone, however, is conveyed through voice-over, that while often lyrical and beautiful, tends to veer distractedly into a tangled hyper-metaphor.

Indeed, during much of the performance the audience will find themselves in the dark, with a voice as their sole company. This is initially effective but does eventually become a touch exhausting; however, as soon as Nankivell reappears, these qualms are soon forgotten. It’s as though her dance is a personal catharsis – she talks of being ‘great, but not exceptional’ – but then demonstrates its fallacy in each of her well-executed movements.

This is humanity stripped bare: a catalogue of fears, hopes, dreams – and dreams-crushed – are made temporarily ethereal before vanishing in darkness.

Ultimately, I left my shoes on warm concrete and stood in the rain is another impressive contribution to contemporary dance, and further evidence that Dancehouse’s unique residency program is hugely invaluable to Melbourne’s increasingly reputable dance scene.

Rogue
Malthouse Theatre
March 11 – 15, 2009.

Rogue is a collective of contemporary dancers that formed after graduating from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2006. The group, which participated in the Kickstart Next Wave Festival program, going on to perform The Counting and Ocular Proof in the 2008 Next Wave Festival, is now a part of the Dance Massive Festival with a triple bill; A Volume Problem, choreographed by Byron Perry; The Counting, by Antony Hamilton; and PUCK by the Rogue dancers.

The evening begins with A Volume Problem, with the stage lights focussing on a box with fake grass on top and dancers crowded around. There are small speakers on top of the box and they are moved about as if they are people. The theme is population growth and auditory response feedback, with the speakers used as a representation of this.

The work is structured episodically – the lights and music fade between each section, disturbing the flow of the piece. The work, consisting of solos, duets and trios, is slick and tightly choreographed. As the dancers move closer to one another, each receives a physical response – similar to the way that holding a mobile phone to a speaker will cause a crackling noise.

The Counting is a highly percussive, disjointed work, but with a bass line that flows right through. The rhythm of the bass is irresistible, pulsating over and over until you can’t help but get lost within it. This continuousness prevents the work from becoming choppy or disconnected. The dancers either move with the beat, or they move through it – Hamilton stamping the piece with strong choreographic choices.

Quirky costume decisions also see the dancers rotate through grey, nondescript clothing – drawing focus to the movement – to white singlets with blue or orange pants.

Internal rhythms of the body are used as stimulus – in one duet, I imagine each dancer’s lungs filling and releasing oxygen, the ventricles of the heart pushing blood into the arteries as their movements begin proximally before being driven to the distal ends of limbs.

PUCK is the last on the program, and as the title suggests, it is playful and meddlesome. It is an audience interactive – the viewer’s turn to have some fun.

A Streets ice-cream vendor walks along the front of the audience. She takes out a bicycle bell, rings it, and suddenly the dancers onstage strike a new posotion – arms above their heads. They continue to move with the ringing of the bell, introducing the audience to the game. You make the sound, they make the move.
The control shifts to the audience, which is quite exciting. One person rings the bell four times in a row inhibiting their ability to move past the first position. I was handed the bell at one stage and must admit I did enjoy the power trip!

Next, other toys are handed out – squeaky balls and robots. These might cause the dancers to change formation, go to another section of the movement or break out of unison.

PUCK progresses through neutrality, desperation, tiredness, to forced fake laughter and happiness. Towards the end two dancers begin to cry, stopping immediately as they get a new instruction from the audience.
To finish, the bell is taken back, returning the dancers to the initial position and signalling a black out.

The triple bill is entertaining, and provides a little something for everyone. The pieces are not so grand as the group’s Next Wave debut, but a more intimate and personable performance. Certainly a highly enjoyable night for all involved.

Lawn
Malthouse Theatre
March 11 – 14, 2009.

Lawn‘s is a world that lingers between reality and the unreal. There is a foreboding, an eeriness that sends shivers up your spine; cockroaches crawl out of faces, parasites are ripped from bodies and a man is glad-wrapped from head to toe.

The production, presented by Splintergroup – a contemporary dance company of independent performers, designers and artists – was first developed in Berlin in 2001, and completed in Australia at Brisbane Powerhouse in 2004. It now travels to Melbourne’s Matlhouse Theatre as a part of the Dance Massive Festival.

As the audience enters, three men – Vincent Crowley, Grayson Milwood and Gavin Webber – are dressed in suits, going about their daily routine on stage. Milwood sits, nonchalant, as he clips his toenails on top of the dining table. Webber stands off to the right looking thoughtful, while Crowley obsessively dusts a bookshelf. The piece is set is a large room, and at the top of the walls the wallpaper is coming away to reveal underneath layers.

Lawn comes from a personal place for the performers, who created the piece while enduring the harsh Berlin winter, homesick for Australia. One day they peeled back the wallpaper of their house to find a painted swastika. The work is about layers and the history contained within our walls, floors and furniture.

The first hint of hyperreality strikes, taking the audience with horrified surprise, when Milwood covers his face with his hands, only to have cockroaches crawl out from between his fingers and run down his arms. The moment disappears into a scene of normalcy as Crowley, the clean freak of the three, chases the cockroaches with his shoe.

Lawn is a work of illusion; the craft of the performance is in the men’s’ ability to create a hyperreality that is as believable as the reality. Through the soundtrack, lighting and intelligent choreography, the work constantly moves between alternate realities, occasionally hanging in the balance. Classical violin, and later an accordion, accompanies the everyday scenes (played live, the musicians concealed by the set), whereas heavy metal is matched with wilder, more desperate dance solos.

The performers’ movements are energetic and rhythmic; all three are athletic and smooth in their transitions onto and off the floor. Milwood climbs, spider-like, up the walls of the room – a web of glad wrap revealed below. There is a collective inhale from the audience as they witness the spider’s calculated, yet risky fall from the top of the set. He is captured and cocooned in the thin plastic sheet below.

The feeling of all this is claustrophobia; the men are trapped within a room, literally crawling the walls, in an uncomfortable craziness. The audience can’t help but feel trapped with them.

It is open to interpretation as to whether these are three men in a room or possibly three different aspects of one man. Milwood and Crowley are shadowy; sometimes they are characters, sometimes ghost-like presences, and sometimes insects.

While the subject matter is serious, this work is at times comical, peppered with tongue-in-cheek attitude. Chuckles from audience members ensue throughout, and there are also some real laugh-out-loud moments. But other times the audience sits on edge of their seats in discomfort.

A fight scene towards the end is a highlight. It is fast-paced and tightly choreographed – Webber is beaten by Milwood and Crowley, using a chair and table. The beauty of this aggressive attack is that the performers do not try to make it look authentic; the blows do not connect and there is no attempt to make it seem as if they do. It is an artful bashing, but a risky one also. Seeing Webber post-performance, he has war wounds to prove it – he sports a black eye from the night before, and admits he was kicked in the head during an earlier performance.

The only point of criticism is the abrupt ending. Although a solace is achieved, the ending is rather the beginning of another tangent of the work.

All in all, though, Lawn is a wonderful production. For those who enjoy a little spine-tingling horror, mixed with excellent stagecraft and strong imagery, and even a little humour, this is for you. It is a highly physical, fast-paced, intelligent performance that will suck you into its world and keep you in enjoyable discomfort, somewhere between the normal and the not so normal.

Billy Elliot The Musical
Her Majesty’s Theatre
January – March, 2009

Melbourne’s theatre year began in spectacular form with the official opening of Billy Elliot The Musical. Adapted for the stage from the 2000 film of the same name, the story revolves around Billy Elliot, a young boy coming to terms with his passion for dance in a traditional patriarchal mining society of Northern England.

The Australian cast employs four different dancers to play the role of Billy ([Rhys Kosakowski, Nick Twiney, Lochlan Denholm and Michael Dameski); the role is intensely physical and much of the drama of the musical is demonstrated through dance rather than the conventional music theatre means of action through song.

The young actors are backed by a strong cast of dancers and performers, including Joshua Horner, who plays the adult Billy, and the very talented team that alternates the role of Michael (Scott Everleigh, Thomas Doherty, Landen Hale Brown and Joel Slater), his cross-dressing friend who is coming to terms with his homosexuality and attraction to Billy.

Genevieve Lemon plays the role of Billy’s dance teacher, who recognises his talent once he inadvertently joins her class and encourages him to continue, despite being mocked for his dance ambition by his father and friends.

In what could have been a very camp production – the music was provided by Elton John, after all – Billy Elliot is a moving and dramatic coming of age story that touches seriously on the issue of traditional masculine roles in society.

On the back of the international success of Wicked, which continues to draw large crowds in Melbourne, the musical is well and truly back in fashion. Billy Elliot is promising a lucrative if limited season, having already won Best Musical at Sydney’s Theatre Awards in 2008 and seen by over 2.2 million people the world over. It is sure to delight local audiences with its captivating choreography, stunning sets and talented cast, combining to provide an insight into the remarkable strength of the human spirit in times of despair.

Billy Elliot is Playing at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Melbourne until March. Tickets available through Ticketek.

I Like This
Chunky Move
November 20 – 29, 2008

Entering Chunky Move studios in Southbank for the preview of I Like This, by Antony Hamilton and Byron Perry, viewers are met with an exposed stage with the potential to transform into anything; any situation or scenario. There are four plastic, orange chairs forming a shallow V centre-stage. In front of the chairs there is a stereo system and a power point – cables of various colours run into it. At the back of the space there are two large speakers sitting on the floor.

The performance begins with three dancers sitting in the chairs, looking intently at the audience. They are all wearing rehearsal gear; track pants and T-shirts in different shades of grey. Quirky ‘80s video game-style music blips in the background, and various lights flash in time with the sounds, illuminating the performers differently each time.

It’s exciting, intriguing, attention grabbing – almost hilarious.

The music finishes and the lights steady as Stephanie Lake, whose character is particularly taken by two comically still, blank-faced men sitting across from her, begins an enthusiastic monologue with the opening words: “I like this …”

There is barely any pretext to the work, and it’s hard to catch on initially – as if the audience has entered a conversation midway. As the performance goes on, though, it develops a dialogue and aesthetic of its own, and all the seemingly random and surprising moments are given specific relevance.

This is a dance piece about making a dance piece. Hamilton and Perry demonstrate ways of composing props, lights, dancers and music in a space for visual and humorous effect. The task they have set themselves is to design an environment – the two directors converse at various intervals throughout, as to how best compose the work. The performers also comment. “Why are there no lights? That’s how injuries happen you idiots,” one shouts.

The audience is tossed into a wide variety of situations, the most entertaining being an ‘under the sea’ scene. Here, a blue case is put over a light and dancers wave like seaweed, making bubble noises, in a recognisably funny way. The audience soaked it up.

Light is used to disguise the transition into and out of the many juxtaposing moments, and the shifts can be disarming as they happen at such a fast pace – from a fight scene, to people screaming, jogging on the spot, swinging a light like a lasso. But it works.

I Like This is rooted in humour (speaking with Hamilton after the show, he compared it to stand-up). The two award winning dance directors come to the performance with a wealth of experience, and it shows. The performers are well rehearsed and movements are timed impeccably for optimal comic value. The closer you are to the stage, the better, as subtleties such as facial expressions really add to the piece.

I Like This is also the first work by Next Move, an initiative by major Melbourne contemporary dance company Chunky Move to support the next generation of Australian dance makers – certainly something to keep an eye on. If this witty, dry-humoured, continually surprising show is anything to go by, there’s plenty to look forward to.

Oedipus – A Poetic Requiem
72 Edward Street, Brunswick
Melbourne Fringe Festival (full coverage here)
Sept 30 – Oct 12, 2008

Liminal (Theatre and Performance) is a strange beast in the Melbourne theatre eco-system. In this city, where most theatre is produced for free and funding is at best flimsy, independent theatre-making is a long session of musical chairs, and a person who can get a large number of people to collaborate for a longer period of time something of a rarity. Another rare thing in this city, sadly but logically, is an independent theatre practitioner past a certain age: while we certainly have established mainstream theatre artists, there is simply not enough security of livelihood on the theatre margin to sustain long-term artistic inquiry.

As Alison Croggon has noted, Liminal, with their sense of collective, long-term collaboration, defined aesthetics and a clear sense of tangent and purpose, are comparable to the visionary ensembles that are lushly funded in, let’s say, Europe, and heralded as creative laboratories, those raising the roof beams for the future. Ariadne Mnouchkine comes to mind, or Needcompany. In Melbourne, needless to mention, this is not quite the case, and Liminal tend to teach their devoted audience much about the suburban architecture of Melbourne, as we wander the back streets of Abbotsford or Brunswick, looking for the right warehouse or private house where their performances take place.

Based on Ted Hughes’s poetically mighty re-working of Seneca’s Oedipus, this is a production of which completely contradicting things can be said with total plausibility. It has a grand vision, fantastic ideas, excellent human and textual material, powerful execution, and yet it fails to work the way one expects it to. There is a touch of too-much and a touch of not-quite: velvety enunciation and somewhat heavy-metal make-up give Oedipus a little bit of easy slickness it doesn’t need, while choreographic and vocal syntony collapses in moments that wouldn’t matter if the performance didn’t strive for microscopic precision.

Liminal makes theatre full of sound and image, minutely choreographed motion and voice: to experience it in a suburban garage, in a glitchy execution with props collapsing, video and sound occasionally malfunctioning, fails the desired total immersion. The tight intimacy of the space works, and doesn’t: a larger space may have relieved Oedipus of some of its visceral potency, but some airiness could have sharpened our senses, slightly irritated as they were by the physical discomfort of crowdedness, of feet pressed against backs, shoulders rubbing, imperfect angles. Hugely ambitious, Oedipus burns under its own magnifying glass.

Partially, though, there may be an internal failure of rhythm and intent. There is not so much a sense of meandering, as a lack of progression until it kicks into the splendid end. Oedipus starts in high-strung tone, and keeps it, unwavering, until the very end. The result, rather than creating horrific tension, creates monotony. While four Jocastas toss and turn in the agony of loss, blame and fault, the audience, in minute steps, gets bored.

But if I focus so much on the shortcomings, it’s because Oedipus is, overall, stuff of giants. Classical tragedy is already thick with re-telling, with memory, but in this version only detritus of the original events remains. Any recognisable characters are shed for a mask of Oedipus and a chorus of four women in black, who less narrate than reminisce, re-live, mourn and wail. Everything has already happened, and on stage there will be only inconsolable mourning, only senseless rage and self-pity. Spitting mouthfuls of exquisite text – a text with a fine pedigree indeed – they bathe their bodies, voices, and the entire black box in gorgeous monochrome film, Ivanka Sokol’s flickering shadows of cloudy skies, streets, woods, faces.

Just like in Liminal’s previous work, Mishima’s The Damask Drum, there is a sense of reiterative, traumatic, short-circuited memory in these confused blurs of film, the orchestrated imprecision with which they slide up and down, bodies reduced to black dress and white skin, white shadows of trees in the black box. Physical movement is nearly perfectly directed: four women merge together and fall apart, assuming distinct voices only to drown into a writhing, wriggling mass of lean limbs and wild hair. And the text, broken between mouths and personae, is the most exquisite piece of writing I have heard on stage, angular and translucent and raucous and spiky.

At the very end, Claire Nicholls has five minutes of the most accomplished theatre one is likely to see in Melbourne this year. In a move characteristic of the production, a nameless black-dressed woman repeats a monologue of a slave, recounting how Oedipus blinded himself. Only a faint carbon-copy of an event, yet brought to life with such visceral urgency – as she screams, she is helpless, senseless chilling despair;

Suddenly he began to weep          everything that had been
Torment suddenly it was sobbing       it shook his whole
Body and he shouted                  is weeping all I can give
Can’t my eyes give any more        let them go with their
Tears          let them go      eyeballs too      everything
Out            is this enough for you you frozen gods of
Marriage     is it sufficient            are my eyes enough

From this point on we are in theatre heaven – although it required a jump-start. And here lies the problem. While Oedipus is flawed and imperfect, the act of critique becomes hard when what Liminal does is systematically rare, rarely systematic, and totally unsupported. And when such senseless acts of beauty go unnoticed, in Brunswick garages.

Click here for Laneway’s full coverage of the Melbourne Fringe Festival.

The Heart of Another is a Dark Forest
Dancehouse
Melbourne Fringe Festival (full coverage here)
Sept 24 – 28, 2008

Twelve Restless performers, with different levels and types of disability, are confronted with twelve fully-able Rawcus performers in this fascinating exploration of the mystery of the other.

When you stand in front of me and look at me,
What do you know of the griefs that are in me
And what do I know of yours?

- Kafka, as quoted in the program notes

The Heart of Another is a Dark Forest opens with a loop of beautiful live music: guitar, piano, pan flute, cello. I’ve often noted that the fusion of genres in Australian theatre happens less between theatre, performance and dance, and more often with visual arts, music, and puppetry. That is, rather than eschewing dramatic narration for rebellious deconstruction, it engages in a sensuous tickle of all the senses, a total experience. This process usually creates, like in this case, lyrical theatre, stage poetry (as Maeterlinck demanded: “la pièce de théâtre dout être avant tout un poème”), in which the linear time of ascending action is replaced by slowly accumulating image-time, what Gertrude Stein would have approvingly called theatre as landscape.

Some of the most successful Australian theatre of recent times meticulously researched the possibilities of this approach, from My Darling Patricia’s Politely Savage and Peepshow Inc.’s Slanting Into the Void, to Vitalstatistix’s Cake (it is not surprising, therefore, that a number of names overlap in the credits of these shows). To analyse The Heart of Another with an analytical mind, thus, may be doing it great disservice.

There are moments in this performance of terrifying human beauty. More terrifying because resolutely silent – by which I don’t mean that speech isn’t present, merely that the words don’t amount to a statement, explanation, or challenge. They remain a part of the stage poetry.

Right at the beginning, all performers assemble on stage, merely breathing until they slowly smile. The variety of persons, of bodies, is astonishing – the sparse means of physical theatre work extraordinarily well at showing the individual beauty of each one of this enormous, diverse ensemble. Where will they all go?, you wonder. How will they all move? Where will this dense human mass disperse? It does and doesn’t: despite choreographic skill at emptying and populating the stage, The Heart of Another seemingly keeps the theatre densely upholstered, filled to the brim, with thick emotions, with faces, costumes, movement, but most crucially with objects.

A man is back-lit behind a life-size child drawing of a man. A woman cuts out a red heart in the paper, and through the hole starts pulling out a red scarf, a paper chain of little girls, toy animals, which another man gives to a girl, who assembles the lot in a wooden box. A mass of people unfolding a silk scarf, each with their own little assemblages: a collection of chocolate coins, or plastic roses and a plastic wedding cake. Someone’s memories, someone’s very private mementos. A girl puts words in a sequence of glass jars; another listens inside each one. Even the backstage is used to reveal a dark, private space behind the representational space at the front. At different times, the performance is counterpointed by a romantic duet, or a solo in dark sfumato.

On the one hand, it is a performance firmly situated in this world, latching onto an endless array of objects and gestures and relations and characters. At the same time, by refusing any response to this world apart from the hermetically, solipsistically intimist, it is a dance of deep, almost painful privacy. Using semi-abled performers, by definition a quiet part of our society – indeed, any society – underpins this sensuous introspection.

At multiple points, perhaps because of the opening quote, I was reminded of Kafka’s love letters to Milena Jesenska, among the most painfully intimate love correspondences of all times. There is more than a flimsy connection of this barely un-symbolist theatre to the love-letter format, with its own solipsism, planar non-narrative time, and an alchemist power to turn awkwardness, unease, fear and disgust into heavy, difficult and intensely private beauty. Instead of judging, we are led to feel. As a way of approaching the problem of able-bodiedness, this is not unintelligent. Everything in The Heart of Another is heart-breakingly beautiful in silence: loneliness, desire, the inability to connect, the girls and the boys. Members of the Rawcus ensemble seemed unaware of how much admiration they incited: the foyer buzzed with excited whispers on the beauty of particular girls.

There are, however, problems for the analytical mind. Keeping in mind that Australia is a resolutely mute culture in many aspects, that much of its best dramatic writing explores the poetic rhythms of non-communication and non-discussion (eg, Holloway’s harrowing Red Sky Morning), its predilection both for physical theatre and for ‘theatre as a poem’ becomes problematic, politically problematic.

Aesthetically, the silence of objects and people makes for very intense theatre. But, in a rich yet delicate landscape of visual effects within The Heart of Another, every object, motion and gesture resounds with what is left unsaid. The moment in which girls, all the girls, one by one join in a group homogeneous movement, although some simply cannot do it properly, struck me as somewhat aloof. In another, a man with speech impediments reads on the back stage – stirring too many memories of war orphans forced to pose at anti-war rallies, of that banal exploitation of someone’s misery for some quick, cheap compassion.

The wallpaper, framing the entire set in a florally geometric, patterned repetition of the same, may have been intended only as decoration – indeed, I commonly see Victorian wallpaper in Australian performances. It is, however, present as an unconscious atavism, a constant reminder of the oppressive, bourgeois structures that sent us all here. It was a society that created textile printing, the industrial, regimented repetition of geometrically restrained, prettified nature. So we have it: the imperative of pleasant decoration, the imperative of sameness, and in the middle of it all, elementary human wonder dancing. The effect is incongruous, raising more questions than it placates with silence. Are we watching prettified disability? Does it need to come with lush music to keep us calm? Are we refusing to think? These are just some of the nagging questions in the back of my mind. To every such political problem that arises, the answer seems to be to smother it indulgently in beautiful décor.

In targeting the body first and the mind later, there is always the danger of abandoning problems half-way through; of not allowing the audience to see clearly, and of choosing the pretty option over the less aesthetically rounded. This can happen even if there is no intention of glossing over. It happened in Cake, with its cheap conflation of baking, pregnancy and femininity; it happened in Politely Savage, with its ornate orientalization of Australia, the 1950s, and the housewife. The entire subtext of Kafka’s love letters is that of a deeply unhappy existence. Many unpleasant things may have been pushed aside in The Heart of Another in order to please the senses, but we may only realise later.

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