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Day: 24 October 2014

Review: The Events

Written by Benjamin Monk on . Posted in Theatre.

The Events does not investigate, as widely reported, the Anders Breivik shootings. The far-right militant killed 77 people—likewise, this play probes an imagined response to a mass shooting at a church hall. Before this, Scottish playwright David Greig was best-known for Dunsinane, an ambitious sequel to Macbeth, and it is unsurprising that a similar theme of clan identity emerges. But The Events goes further, electrifyingly utilising Greig’s fierce intelligence to interrogate society’s sentimental desire to understand a terrorist’s reasoning.

It is choirmaster Claire’s (Derbhle Crotty) insatiable pursuit of information over an acceptance of a terrorist’s humanity that drives the piece. She effectively spars with the multi-roling Clifford Samuel, playing all other characters including the killer, a far-right politician and, most humorously, Sharman Dave from Leeds. Both performers offer deep poignancy against the piece’s intensity, but it is the visceral power of a daily-changing choir that connects the play’s limited fictionalised scope to reality.

As non-actors, She Choir gave a honest naïvety to the impending action, becoming an essential device for audience assimilation into the community. Director Ramin Gray, of the Actors Touring Company, didactically has their harmonies reflect both organised religion and a primal, ritualistic ceremony. Fusing the dual perceptions of a unified, all-female choir and a tribe, Gray powerfully reflects that a primitive, outsider origin always persists, however acculturating a community acts.

As a microcosm of a willingly distracted society that caused the terrorist’s formation, the invitation to join the ‘crazy tribe’ and sing at the conclusion was harrowing. Whilst providing euphoria as a ‘real’ choir outside of The Events, their sustained function was to question the emotionally cathartic indulgences of contemporary society when faced with deceptively anomalous evil. Despite this, astonishingly, audience members still sung along—society, it seems, will never be free of culture’s distracting exhilaration.

Review: Secret Theatre: A Series of Increasingly Impossible Acts

Written by Benjamin Monk on . Posted in Theatre.

Relentless buzz has stalked Secret Theatre from the Lyric Hammersmith to the Edinburgh Fringe and beyond, with any expectation of secrecy now lost. Ascending the endless flights of stairs to reach an inauspicious rehearsal room, away from the Royal Exchange’s main site, I did know beforehand that a randomly selected performer would be subjected to ‘impossible acts’. But the emergent ‘acts’ were not simply a presumed spectacle of circus acts, but a multitude of performative interpretations and expressions of the ‘act’ explored: narrative acts, gender acts, enactment of fears and joy—even past acts to be relived. While the detail of each ‘act’ is unique to the day’s performer, the piece’s ultimate strength lies in affecting audience beyond the experience of a chosen participant, evolving into something outstanding—a reminder of our own messy, collective humanity.

Out of the nine-strong, gym kit-clad ensemble, the night’s ‘protagonist’ was Hammed. His immediate reframing, from ensemble presence to unique aura, immediately prompts a thought: will he or won’t he achieve the impossible? Within the appearance of an appropriated classroom, eating a lemon and bending a bar becomes an anarchic PE lesson permeated by a failure to achieve. The ensemble ask Hammed everything, questioning as if a personal Quizoola!, from the story of his first kiss to his greatest fears—that are literally wrestled with on a crash mat.

In the most astonishing fragment, Hammed answers questions framed as dialogue from a past, assumingly real relationship. He is heartbreakingly forced to re-enact the entire decay, from love-struck to the inevitable love-loss. Revisiting a mirage of your past in performance, from passion to pity in just two minutes, is devastating for audience and performer. Unsurprisingly, at the performance’s close Hammed, also the youngest of the company, is emotionally and physically drained. Like The Events, these slippages of reality are vital for audience empathy and understanding, but here the pathos is always balanced with innocent joy. The final, emancipatory dance was breathtaking, as if cleansing and celebrating all that came before.

I am attempting to not to reveal too much—for this piece particularly, there should be some surprises—but be sure that by the end, completion of the impossible is irrelevant. Hope envelops fear. Humanist comradeship pervades all. This daring, versatile performance group provides pure delight, that must be seen to be believed.