A (Delicious) Nightmare on Orange Street
19 Mar 2011 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: Adrian Collins, Andrew Laubscher, Dorian Burnstein, Emily Child, Guy de Lancey, Julia Anastasopoulos, Scott Sparrow, The Intimate Theatre, The Mechanicals, Tinarie van Wyk Loots, Vaneshran Arumugam
The Mechanicals have delivered the impossible. A full-cast Shakespeare, subtly, intelligently and creatively performed….in the Intimate Theatre. Good lord.
Guy de Lancey directs a full cast of the usual suspects (with several guest appearances) in yet another trademark dark and sexy performance by the Mechanicals – a welcome return to form after what I felt to be a rather disappointing adaptation of The Great Gatsby earlier this season. Audiences experience a world both grotesque and, paradoxically, enchanting – a veritable Victorian freak show of dribbling mad Dukes, misshapen fairy attendants and warrior women.
Photo courtesy Jesse Kramer
The set is magnificent, the lighting, creative, exiting and moody (unlike the ham-handed efforts of Bottom and co at creating moonshine, De Lancey designs a solution for depicting moonlight that is utterly ingenious and very beautiful). Perhaps my favourite touch, though, was the intermittent exposure of the back wall where a giant mirror reflected a well-lit audience to itself. A row of open white lights along the top make it resemble nothing so much as a stage dressing room mirror – insert your best after-dinner postmodern theories here.
I was deeply uncomfortable with the unironic and brutally uncompromising humour in the depiction of handicap in Dorian Burnstein’s Tom Snout. As, indeed, I was meant to be. This is not a rendering that is afraid of politics, that panders to the comfort zone or makes excuses. The constant opportunities to view oneself that the mirror provides ensures that, in viewing the other, we are never fully able to escape our own prejudices and politics. De Lancey denies the audience a comfortable, passive experience of consumption, ensuring that whatever reaction the other(ed) body or interpretation provokes ultimately reflects own selves as we sit, Duke-like in our viewing.
Despite a refusal work with PC notions of the body, De Lancey interestingly moves away from the standard misogynism inherent in the text, giving the play a strong feminist reading. Certainly, misogyny rears its ugly head at every turn, but here the women show their mettle. Textually, it is a challenge to give the women in the play some semblance of fightback without resorting to tokenism, or forcing the text in a direction it won’t support. De Lancey shows women up against the wire, women on the edge, women bent but not broken. He gives them fight, gives them (quite literally) clout and, most of all, gives them the power to subvert patriarchal rule even as they are fooled, forced and dominated. There is ample space for a very uncomfortable post-feminist interpretation here, but this is one area where Du Lancey ensures our modern sensibilities are catered for.
Speaking of modern sensibilities, the bizarrely jarring ante is upped with some excellent anachronistic additions – just as in a dream, where realism blends seamlessly with fantasy leaving the dreamer with a jangling mix of effects, so we are presented with a Elvis-coiffed, singing Bottom – far more disturbing than any ass’s head ever could be.
Tinarie van Wyk Loots and Scott Sparrow are, predictably, outstanding as Titania and Oberon. No idealised fairy kingdom here; this is a world at war – a viciously un-civil war – and the battered fairies show on their bodies the all-out war for power in all its gory violence. The war over sex and power is given a face, and it is a battered one. For me, they steal the show – a powerhouse combination of van Wyk-Loots’ chilling venom (which melts into disturbingly besotted lust) contrasts beautifully with Sparrow’s grinning mania. Both fairies offer the promise of darkness, whether it be sexual power or social. They, more than any of the human characters, seem properly ‘real’, true to their selves as they wage their all-out battle for sexual dominance.
In a brilliant move, Theseus the Duke – that beacon of Patriarchal oppression and Athenian (male) rationality – is depicted as a mad, debauched, dribbling inbred, his power as laughable as it is disturbingly present at the periphery of the mad revels of the crackpot dukedom he presides over. Hippolyta, forced into a role as a sullen child-bride, a virgin sacrifice to the Duke’s whim, is initially a virtually silent – and silenced – toy puppet. De Lancey has her body speak the volumes she cannot and, as the play progresses, we see her gaining resistance and, in the final gin-sodden bridal scene, we find her morphed into a washed-up Jackie Onassis; grim, determined to fight to the end and simultaneously self aware of what awaits her.
De Lancey has some bold choices for the hereos, too. Emily Child and Andrew Lauscher are deliciously self-obsessed lovers, Child particularly delivers a Hermia that is coldly, indeed ruthlessly in love, though whether with Lysander or her own rebellion we are never quite sure. The ice in her tone (and power in her arm) makes her a most formidable opponent and even more formidable lover. Laubscher was a wonderful Lysander; sexy and strong with just enough of the ridiculous dandy to show us the darker side of what can too easily and simplistically be cast as a golden couple.
Casting Adrian Collins as Puck was an intriguing choice, and one that worked surprisingly well. No mischievous imp, Collins brought cold, barely-suppressed aggression to the role – an ever-present, menacing masculinity that could not be contained even by the gaudiest of disco shoes. The use of Collins in a ringmaster role to frame the action – to reveal and conceal the cast and act as an audience interface – could not have set the tone better.
There were a couple of decisions – directorial or personal – that didn’t work quite as well for me. Julia Anastasopoulos’ heightened agitation and fits of petulance could have worked very well – certainly she came across as a most alarming lover, one sitting just on the comedy knife edge of Fatal Attraction potential. She grew on me in the second act (when everything hits a manic tone), but didn’t sit well with me in the first act where I felt it to be too heavy on the side of emotional caricature. The Mechanicals (the troupe in the play, mind!) did not deliver quite as I’d hoped, though Vaneshran Arumugam gave a deliciously pompous and extremely clever performance as Bottom.
If dark, disturbing, sexy theatre’s your thing, you really should head down to Hiddingh. The Intimate has got her sexiest makeover yet and she’d love the pleasure of your company, Tuesday through Saturdays at 7:30 until the end of this month.
Been There, Done That? Get to the Intimate
10 Mar 2010 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: Deborah Vieyra, Julia Anastasopoulos, Mark Elderkin, The Intimate Theatre
The thing about being Capetonian is you can’t really live anywhere else without feeling – in some small way – you’ve downgraded. This counts double if you happen to have moved somewhere chilly. Double again if it happens to be London. Sure, the pounds compensate, the tube is lekker, but…well, quite.
The South African characters of Done London who, in time-honoured local fashion, have ‘taken the gap’ to seek fame and fortune in London are left dealing with this conundrum.
Of the three SA housemates, Kate is fighting jangling hormones, Jax is dating a Pom with a travel phobia and Sue’s dead keen on joining the army. When Bryan sets up an extended spell of couch crashing in this all-female SAffer digs, cracks begin to show in an otherwise unremarkable work abroad experience. Life in London: not all it’s cracked up to be. Or is it?
If the set-up sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Curiously, the piece comes across rather as an episode of your favourite sitcom. Indeed, you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d landed up on the set of a local spin-off of ‘Friends.’ Sure, the characters are more Groot Gat than Big Apple and the setting more Hyde than Central Park, but the formula remains. There’s the quirky blonde ditz, the nerdy hopeless romantic, the lovestruck shopaholic, the naughty-but-nice ladies man. There’s even a foreign barman – though his preference runs more to liquor than lattes. They all – at one point or another – live together in one heaving Hoxton digs.
This play speaks to a generation of twenty-somethings who’ve traded wide open spaces for a semi-detached in Wimbledon. Now that the two year UK work visa option has been revoked, Done London presents a particularly poignant picture of a generation of gap year-ers. A hopeful Southern Hemisphere lot hopelessly out of place in a dingy big smoke. This play will, I think, strike a chord with Gen Ex(pat) – those who’ve been there, done that and returned to tell the tale.
Speaking of telling the tale, the Intimate Theatre is a wonderful venue for allowing relatively new theatre makers a cost-effective run. It’s great to see new scripts from young writers get an airing, but much of the time these are just the scripts that need the money spent on them – rehearsal time to develop and remodify. Sometimes this particular script falls a bit short, with character development never really being achieved.
For the most part, though, actors work well with the material, delivering some strong performances. Mark Elderkin’s impeccable comic timing makes for one hysterically funny Eastern European disgruntled barman – a definite highlight. Julia Anastasopoulos and Deborah Vieyra also delivered solid performances, with Vieyra’s workout-obsessed, plat-voweled Sue being a particular delight.
A friend pointed out how lovely it is to see a large cast production on stage. It’s true, budget constraints tend to give us a glut of interesting two handers on CT independent stages and in this respect Done London is a real treat.
A word to the wise: the Intimate Theatre has no aircon. If it’s a hot night – and it probably will be – you might find yourself a little uncomfortable. Perhaps the greatest testament to the actors is the fact that, in 40 degree heat and padded jackets, they still managed to carry off the air of winter chill. Not being an actor myself, I strongly recommend light clothing.
Done London isn’t highbrow. It doesn’t pretend to be. It’s pop theatre, pure and simple. You watch it for the same reason you’d watch your favourite sitcom – it’s funny, friendly and all-too familiar.
Seventy Rand for a tube ride? You’ve got to be bladdy kidding.
Seventy Rand for an evening’s laughs? Now that’s what I’m talking about, bru.
