A Must-See, Second Time Around
23 Dec 2010 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: Alicia McCormick, Jason Potgieter, Kim Kerfoot, The Intimate Theatre
Hey, I’ve got an idea! Let’s go to the Intimate and see two-hander about a relationship break up.
Uh….no, actually, this time it’s different. Really.
Jason Potgeiter (playwright and actor) takes on the standard indie theatre formula in The Things You Left Behind and gives it more than a small twist of originality.
The Things You Left Behind isn’t a love story. It’s the story around a love story. It’s the story of all the heartbreaks, little and large, that affect others on the periphery of the lovers’ grand love narrative. In a series of five monologues, it takes on the unexpected, the unexplored – often far more interesting – perspectives on the age-old tale of relationship break ups. From the perspective of the drag queen upstairs to the only white car guard in the city, we circle tantalisingly closer to the love story, filling in information by default as we learn of other lives, other stories.
I really loved the opening and closing monologues of the white car guard and the upstairs drag queen. Alicia McCormick was at her best playing a sexy ‘seen it all before’ paramedic, though I felt my attention waiver slightly in her, admittedly tricky, portrayal of the conservative mother. She is a talented actress we don’t see enough of on stage and I look forward to watching her in Paul Torsio’s ‘Hitched” at the Kalk Bay Theatre in early 2011.
Potgieter has the uncanny ability to nail a character before saying a word. Although he has a relaxed stage presence, his body seems to communicate a nervous energy that he can play either up or down and which imbues his characters with a vulnerability, a breakability that is, paradoxically, powerfully emotive. I loved seeing him on stage, especially performing his own work. I want more.
Director Kim Kerfoot took a stripped down approach to the staging, focusing more (and rightly) on the monologues themselves, making good use of the actors’ range and adding some clever eye lines and witty moments of fourth wall audience play.
Potgieter is also one of those rare creatures: an excellent actor with a gift for text. He has a real sense for narrative energy, where and when to use rhetorical devices and, most importantly, when to stop using them. His innate understanding of what makes a narrative interesting – the small observations, the seemingly trivial quirky anecdote – combines with his ability to lull the audience comfortably with light humour, then yank them almost bodily into unexpected, sharp pathos. It is wonderful craftsmanship.
The Things You Left Behind reminds us that every all-consuming passion happens in a context. It shows us the subtle, profound bonds life forges between complete strangers, the hundreds of coincidences and connections that happen each day without us realising it.
Seeing new writing come to life is exciting. Seeing excellent new writing is rare. The Things You Left Behind was both. Sure, it probably needs a bit more development – it felt slightly short to me and seemed to need something subtle I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I reckon, though, that it will get this over the course of next year and have an even more exciting second run.
In fact, I’m counting on it.
FTH:K Make Magical Theatre Look Like Child’s Play
16 Nov 2010 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: Daniel Buckland, Emilie Starke, FTH:K, Kim Kerfoot, Liezl de Kock, The Baxter Theatre
Womb Tide. What a title. My immediate response was that it best not be of the Dan Brown ‘my fecund body is a sacred vessel’ ilk or I may have to find more practical uses for a blade and chalice than symbolism.
It’s not.
Quite the opposite, in fact. Adapted from a short story by Lara Foot, Womb Tide traces the story of a couple from the beautiful agonies of courtship to the very different kind of agony of childlessness. It’s a story imbued in equal measures with deep pain and deep joy.
Womb Tide, like FTH:K’s previous offing Pictures of You, deals with the human side of social issues, the relationship between the colder outer world and unique inner worlds we create as reactions to, or fortresses against, that. It’s a love story – between partners, between parents, between families. We meet hugely sympathetic, yet flawed, characters. The introduction of a puppet as the central figure around whose presence much of the drama unfolds adds another magical layer to the compelling visual complexity of the production.
Both main characters are a complete delight to watch. Liezl de Kock is captivating: coy without being prissy, boisterous without being melodramatic, gleefully animated without being emotionally shallow. Daniel Buckland matches de Kock perfectly, managing to pull off a sensitive blend of brave protectiveness and anxious helplessness as the husband. The brilliance of the ‘Family Movers’-cum-puppeteers (played sensitively, subtly and beautifully by Kim Kerfoot and Emilie Starke) is an ingenious solution to the potentially distracting problem of the puppet manipulator and added poignancy to an already touching tale.
The fact that Womb Tide is physical theatre with only the barest hint of recognisable words only heightens the characters’ tangible sense of distress and helplessness at the limits of their bodies. I’m quite a wordy person but even I acknowledge that some things are most eloquently expressed without them. The most gut-wrenching moments for me were the ones communicated in a single gesture or look. In a country of so many different languages, so many different stories, so many different body/abilities, it’s a form of theatre that really deserves to be explored. The focus on the body as site of anxiety helps to transcend the superficial differences between race, culture and language and opens us into a new way of communicating – and, as audience members – experiencing.
I think, precisely because it IS so hard to adjust to something different, the 80 minute performance sometimes had moments where I struggled. Long periods without words to anchor the right hand side of my brain got me slightly fidgety at times. That’s ok. I think that’s part of experiencing something different – it’s not always completely comfortable. If it were, it wouldn’t challenge.
Perhaps one of the greatest joys I got from Womb Tide was the multifunctional use of props. Ponds became tables, baths turned into gardens; everything had the hidden potential to become something else, often resulting in some pretty craft-y visual metaphors. This points to the changeability of things, the magic of different perspectives, the importance of letting go of your frame of reference and has wonderful resonance with the play as a whole.
Speaking of design, there’s the same wonderful sense of retro style that touches all FTH:K productions and makes the finishing of their productions such a sensory feast. Little intertextual touches like the frantic stirring of a teacup or static from a radio reward those who have seen other productions, but don’t make the mistake in thinking that this is Pictures of You 2. Whilst there are many stylistic and superficial plot similarities (a couple’s relationship suffers under the weight of a violent attack on the life they have made for themselves), the stories stand on their own as unique expressions.
I really love what FTH:K does: intelligent, beautiful, open-hearted quality theatre that maintains a childlike joy in play, in creation and in love whilst toying with very adult themes. Genre-wise, I think I love FTH:K’s theatre in the same way I love Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novels: beautiful, sad, hopeful tales that move you profoundly without a scrap of sentimentality. Magical realism – however that term might be contested – creates a space where you suspend your belief in strictest reality but not in human nature.
This is magical theatre. It’s happening right now. Go and experience it.
(Womb Tide runs till the 4th December at the Baxter Golden Arrow Studio. Book through Computicket)
